


Hidden Fires

by Ms_Starlight



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:27:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 46,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28801299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ms_Starlight/pseuds/Ms_Starlight
Summary: A fire knocks out power to the Training Center, forcing Seifer and Quistis to seek shelter together in a safe room. In the dark, little space another kind of fire kindles. One which will be a lot more difficult to put out.
Relationships: Seifer Almasy/Quistis Trepe
Comments: 43
Kudos: 42





	1. Lights Out

**Author's Note:**

> Don't let the Shakespeare quote fool you. This fic is pure trash.

_“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”  
_ -William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Chapter 1: Lights Out  
  
Quistis Trepe’s boots crunched against the floor of the Training Center as she walked down the dimly lit path. Breathing deep of the verdant scent of wet earth, she prowled the walkways and tried to forget that Balamb Garden was currently hundreds of miles out at sea, far beyond any sight of land.  
  
As she walked, she stretched the tension of the day out of her arms and back.  
  
It felt wonderful to be in amongst the trees and out in nature, even if it was only a simulacrum of the real thing. She’d spent so much of the trip so far holed up in her classroom and her office that she’d begun to feel like an animal trapped in a cage. Unable to sleep, she’d come here to walk and — hopefully — to engage in a good fight.  
  
Often, the monsters here were more active at night. They roamed wider. Became bolder.  
  
The t-rexaurs especially.  
  
Her whip tapped against her thigh as she walked. Magic hummed in her veins.   
  
As she started up the path leading toward the pond, a rustling in the brush ahead caught her attention.   
  
Not big enough to be a t-rexaur. Grats, probably.  
  
Easy opponents. But they would do for now.  
  
She unfurled Save the Queen and, keeping her steps light, continued her approach.  
  
She had almost reached the top of the rise when the brush suddenly exploded and whatever was in it came launching out with a savage cry. Quistis moved to duck out of the way with a cry of her own, but both she and her attacker came up short.  
  
“Seifer?!”  
  
“Quistis?!”  
  
They both added at the same time, their voices overlapping perfectly: “What the hell?!”  
  
He wore dark pants, a dark tank top, and had a smudge of dirt on his shoulder. A scape on his bicep looked recent. Apparently he’d already been here for a while. He straightened and lowered Hyperion.   
  
“Sorry. I thought you were a grat.”  
  
Quistis shook her head and wrapped Save the Queen back up. “Is that how you approach every fight? Hurling yourself at an opponent without even getting a good look at it first?”  
  
He shrugged. “Yeah. Pretty much. Plus, I didn’t think anyone else would be here. What’re you doing out so late at night?”  
  
“Trying to get some training in when I knew no one else would be around.” She leveled him with a look, hoping he’d get the message and leave her be.  
  
He didn’t.  
  
“I hear ya,” he said, crossing his arms and continuing to block the path. “I’m starting to go seriously stir crazy. Remind me again who thought this mission was a good idea?”  
  
“That would be Squall,” she replied. “Though I was on the committee, too.”  
  
Seifer blinked. “Oh. Right. Well…it better be worth it is all I can say.”  
  
Balamb Garden was on its way to perform a detailed investigation of the Deep Sea Research Center. Though funded by Esthar, Cid and Squall both hoped that they might be able to learn more about how to safely use guardian forces there. Now that Garden was limiting their use to temper the effects of memory loss in cadets, there was a lot of concern that SeeD might be losing some of its edge.  
  
“The trip is long and boring,” Quistis admitted, “but trust me….this place is amazing. You’ll have plenty to do once we get there. The whole stricture is overrun by some of the most powerful monsters I’ve ever seen. It’s going to take everyone and everything we’ve got just to keep the science teams safe.”  
  
“Sounds fun.”  
  
Quistis wanted to scoff at his attitude. Except that it _did_ sound fun.   
  
These days, challenges were hard to come by.  
  
“Anyway…” Quistis said, hoping to wrap up the conversation. “You should go get some rest.”  
  
“Nah. I’m not done here yet. Was hoping to find a t-rexaur before I hit the hay for the night.”  
  
 _Damn._ “Me too.”  
  
“It’s weird that I haven’t run into one yet. They’re usually way more aggressive at night. I have to scrape cadets off the floor in here all the time. They’re constantly getting themselves attacked while trying to sneak off to the Secret Area after curfew.”  
  
Seifer had returned to Garden not long after the war, and while he still was not a SeeD and was not authorized to go on missions, he’d been incorporated into the staff in a position not dissimilar from the one he’d had as part of the Disciplinary Committee. Recently, he’d taken on other responsibilities besides just enforcing Garden rules, including teaching some of the combat classes. The extra responsibility had tempered him a bit and these days he was more bark than bite. Still, his fearsome reputation preceded him and the students largely regarded him with a mix of terror and awe.  
  
She didn’t think most cadets would view running into him in the Training Center as much different than bumping into a t-rexaur.  
  
Perhaps that was why he’d come so late at night.  
  
“Have you looked up around the pond?” Quistis asked him.  
  
“Not yet. Was just headed that way.”  
  
She didn’t want him to go with her, but she couldn’t think of any polite way to say as much. She was contemplating her words when the floor suddenly vibrated and shuddered.  
  
Seifer looked down in alarm. “What the hell was that?”  
  
“I don’t know. It felt like—”  
  
All of Garden lurched violently. A distant boom like thunder echoed from deep under their feet.  
  
Quistis met Seifer’s gaze.   
  
“That can’t be good,” she said.  
  
He opened his mouth to reply when the lights went out, plunging them into absolute darkness. The black was so impenetrable that it momentarily knocked the breath out of Qusitis. She reeled, searching for something to hold onto, and her wild, clasping hand found Seifer in the black. She grabbed hold of what she thought was his shirt and held tight.  
  
“Shit,” he said. “This is bad.”  
  
“Maybe the lights will come back on in a minute.”  
  
They stood for a second, waiting.  
  
Quistis hoped her eyes might adjust enough to make out at least some of her surroundings, but it remained so profoundly dark that she couldn’t see anything.  
  
The PA crackled on.  
  
“ _Attention_ ,” came Nida’s voice. “ _Students and staff, please remain in your dormitories. Garden has experienced a major failure in one of the B-level engines. We have teams heading to address it now. The dormitory wing is in no danger, but some parts of Garden are currently experiencing power outages. Again, please remain in your dormitories until further notice. Thank you.”  
  
_ Seifer swore. “They can’t turn on the lights in here but they can run the damned PA?”  
  
“It has its own closed power circuit so that it can remain functional in emergencies.”  
  
“Well, we can’t just stand around in the dark waiting until they get it fixed. Let’s get out of here.”  
  
He moved and a ball of light formed, swirling about his palm. Fire magic. An unruly type of magic, to be sure, but one Seifer had always possessed an affinity for. He held it in check, the spell burning half-formed in his grip.  
  
“Now we just need to find something to light.”  
  
He’d barely gotten the words out when an alarm sounded and a steady spray of cold water began raining down on them from the ceiling. Quistis shrieked. Seifer swore. And the fire immediately fizzled out.  
  
“You have got to be _kidding_ me!”  
  
Quistis cast about in her mind for a solution.   
  
Seifer was right — they couldn’t stay put and wait for the power to come back on. While stumbling around the Training Center in the dark was bad, being found by a bunch of grats or a t-rexaur in the pitch black was even worse. They were sitting ducks right now.  
  
They had to try to get to a better position.   
  
“There’s a safe room somewhere along the east wall,” she shouted over the hail of water coming down around them.   
  
The Training Center had several, positioned regularly along the walls for cadets to run to if they ended up in a battle that was too much for them to handle. Each one was stocked with med-magic, first aid supplies, and a phone with which to call the infirmary for evac.   
  
“The door might not even open with the power out.”  
  
Something crunched in the foliage nearby and Quistis’s heart leapt up into her throat.  
  
“I think it’s our best shot.”   
  
“Yeah. Okay.” Seifer stepped close to her. “Let’s go.”  
  
“Take my hand. I don’t want to get separated.”  
  
He hesitated, then sighed. “Fine.”  
  
His hand closed over hers and locked tight. Though he wore gloves, the solid human contact of his firm grip helped to center Quistis in the swimming blackness all around them.  
  
“I think it’s this way.” She tugged him forward, off the path and into the trees.  
  
While the tree canopy at least provided some shelter from the sprinklers, they formed a treacherous maze to try and navigate in the dark. Every other step, Quistis seemed to bump into something. Tree trunks, rocks, and logs defeated her at every turn.  
  
Behind her, Seifer made a sudden noise and pitched forward, knocking them both down into the mud together.  
  
Underneath him, Quistis groaned. “What happened?”  
  
“How the hell should I know? I can’t see a damned thing! Must’ve tripped over a fucking tree root or something!”  
  
For a moment, as Seifer picked himself up off of her, Quistis cursed herself and the choices that had brought her here. If only she’d stayed in bed and tried to sleep rather than heading out to “get some exercise,” she would be lounging in warmth and comfort with the rest of Garden as this crisis passed. Not lying in the mud in a monster infested jungle with Seifer Almasy.   
  
“Lower your voice,” she chided him. “We don’t want to attract attention.”  
  
“Screw attracting attention! I say we use everything we’ve got to torch our way out of here. Just bust out so much magic the stupid sprinklers won’t be able to keep up.”  
  
Quistis rolled her eyes. “We just need to get to the safe room. By now, we’ve got to be getting close. We’re fine. This is fine.”  
  
Like with everything else tonight, her optimism immediately proved unfounded.   
  
As Seifer got back to his feet, a heavy step and a great huff of breath off to their left made both of them freeze. _That_ definitely hadn’t been a grat. A second earth shaking step confirmed her suspicions. Only one animal in the Training Center was big enough to sound like that. And it was close.   
  
_Oh fuck_.  
  
Quistis scrambled to her feet.   
  
“Quick. Get behind me.”  
  
“What? No way!”  
  
She cast a spell and a haze of warm, yellow magic suffused the air around her. The meager light that it gave off momentarily illuminated their surroundings and she saw Seifer staring at her, his hair matted down with the rain, his shirt stuck to his chest. Off to his left, behind a large tree, moved a gigantic form — striped and scaly and full of teeth. She only got the barest glimpse of it turning to move toward them before the light from the spell faded and its impact hit her.  
  
A hard jolt of adrenaline set her heart racing. Magic flooded her system. All the deep, dark spells that she could only seem to access in her most desperate states surged to the surface.   
  
The low rumble of the t-rexaur’s growl emanated out of the dark.  
  
“Stand back!” she barked at Seifer and threw him behind her.  
  
Quistis put both hands out in front of her and backed up, trying to give herself enough space to cast. She ran into Seifer and kept going, backing them both into a tree. With him safely pinned there, she let the magic loose. “ _Degenerator_!”  
  
Pulsing flashes of light caught the monster coming straight for them — fangs bared. It snapped inches from Quistis’s outstretched hands as the spell caught hold of it and spun it backward, sucking it into a void that winked out of existence with one final flash.  
  
Silence and darkness fell again with equally oppressive intensity.  
  
Water pelted down on her head and shoulders, seeming to steam against her overheated skin.   
  
With the aura magic still working through her, Quistis trembled. Her pulse pounded in her throat. She became instantly aware of Seifer behind her, pressed tight between her back and the tree. He was breathing hard, too.   
  
“Did I just have a seizure, or did that entire t-rexaur just get sucked into a black hole?”  
  
“I’m actually not sure what happens to them,” Quistis admitted.  
  
He paused as that sank in. “Does it work every time?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Damn.”  
  
“We should keep going. I’ll try to run defense, but you have to get out of the way when I tell you to. I can’t aim in the dark.”  
  
Seifer grunted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
“Maybe you should cast aura, too. Just in case.”  
  
“Why? I don’t have any fancy blue magic that’ll help us. I have to _see_ the thing I want to kill to do much good.”  
  
“If I’m compromised, you’ll need to be prepared to give the fight everything you’ve got. Cast it, just to be safe.”  
  
He shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because aura is a class A spell. Upper-crust SeeDs only. I’ve never been cleared to use it.”  
  
 _“Oh_. Right…” Quistis cleared her throat. “I’ll cast it on you then and keep it up until we get to the safe room. Ready?”  
  
He grumbled and she took that as a yes.   
  
A minute later, they were on their way again, both of them hyper-aware and shivering. Seifer’s hand kept clenching around hers and he jumped at every noise. At long last, they found the wall of the Training Center but not the door to the safe room. Quistis flattened her hand against the metal wall and suppressed the urge to scream. They’d have to walk along the wall until they found it. She turned to the right, hoping that it was the correct way, and started off, pulling Seifer along behind her.   
  
At long last, her fingers found a seam in the wall. A doorframe.  
  
“I think this is it!”  
  
She dropped Seifer’s hand to search for the keypad. It didn’t require any sort of authentication, just a human handprint — _any_ human handprint — and it would open. She fumbled until she found it and sucked in a breath.  
  
 _Here it goes.  
  
_ She pressed her palm to the reader and waited.  
  
Nothing.  
  
“It’s not working.”  
  
Seifer scoffed. “Told you.”  
  
“It’s not like _you_ had any good ideas!”  
  
The trees around them shuddered. Branches snapped.  
  
 _Ugh!_ Not again…  
  
Seifer listened to the movement through the jungle for a moment, his body still with alarm. “Let’s try and lever it open,” he said, his voice low. “It’s not supposed to be secure from people, just grats and t-rexaurs.”  
  
“You do it. I’ll keep watch.”  
  
They switched places and Quistis listened with growing concern as the forest became positively alive with movement. Behind her, Seifer fiddled with the door.  
  
“Hurry up…”  
  
“I’m going as fast as I can.”  
  
Something moved close by on their left, and then something else mirrored that movement on their right.  
  
“Seifer. There’s more than one.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
He swore and she heard him grunt and strain at the door.  
  
 _Shit_.  
  
Steps thundered suddenly toward them.  
  
Seifer was already casting.   
  
Magic flared blue, forming a bright shell. By its light, Quistis saw the t-rexaur charging them. It was already too close. She wouldn’t have enough time to cast.  
  
Seifer’s arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back hard against his chest right as the t-rexaur’s tail lashed around and struck at them. It bounced off Seifer’s protect spell with a flash and ringing noise so loud that it rattled Quistis’s teeth. He held her so tight that she fell within the spell’s boundary, but just barely. Magic buzzed inches from her face.   
  
“I think I’ve got it,” he gasped in her ear.  
  
A second later, with the sound of the t-rexaur pounding toward them again, the door peeled open a crack and Seifer wedged himself in the gap. The aura spell gave him unnatural strength. He lifted Quistis up, tossed her over his thigh where he had his leg braced, and then tumbled after into the room. They fell in a pile together as the door shut behind them with a mechanical whine.   
  
Outside, the t-rexaur slammed into the wall with a resounding bang.  
  
Seifer and Quistis didn’t move as it stomped and snapped and tried to puzzle out how to extract its prey from the small hole into which it had escaped. Quistis shut her eyes against the blackness and found her face buried against some part of Seifer — his shoulder? chest? — as the monster rubbed and scraped against the metal door but found no purchase.  
  
Eventually, at long last, it huffed and gave up. Quistis listened to it move away before releasing the breath she’d been holding.  
  
Silence and stillness wrapped heavily around them. No more pounding rain from the Training Center sprinklers. No more monsters lurking at their backs. Nothing except their own gasping breaths and the quick thump of Quistis’s heartbeat in her ears.   
  
“ _Damn_ ,” Seifer swore softly.  
  
Quistis blinked with surprise at how close to her face he sounded.  
  
With the way they’d landed and the distracting surge of aura magic still addling her brain, it took her a moment to piece together exactly where they were in relation to one another. The material she had gripped in her hands was his shirt — one hand over his chest, the other lower near his belly. He was half on top of her, his shoulder pivoted so that it was on the floor next to hers, and his thigh was pressed hard between her legs.  
  
A sharp stab of heat surged through her.  
  
 _It’s just the aura spell_ , she told herself and swallowed hard.  
  
He shifted and Quistis was unable to stop herself from groaning.  
  
“You hurt?” he sat up a little.  
  
“No.” She tried to catch her breath. “You?”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
Quistis flattened both hands against his chest and shivered at the solid expanse of it. Desperate for space, she pushed him off.  
  
“We should try to find a light.”  
  
He cleared his throat. “Right.”  
  
He lifted himself off her, but even once Quistis got to her feet there was no avoiding him. In the tiny room, they kept bumping into one another while searching the walls and cabinets. Every touch sent Quistis’s mind spiraling into dark, dangerous places.  
  
When he brushed against her bottom, Quistis let out a squeal.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing. You just touched me.”  
  
“Of course I _touched_ you. This place is the size of a fucking closet. The two of us can’t stand in here at all without brushing elbows. It’s nothing to scream about.”  
  
“Well, it wasn’t exactly the brush of the elbow.”  
  
“Then what was it?”  
  
“It was…inappropriate.” Quistis felt her face grow hot and was glad that he could not see her blushing.   
  
Seifer paused for a moment. “ _How_ inappropriate?”  
  
Quistis tsked in disgust. “I’m not going to describe it in detail.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because it wasn’t that big of a deal.”  
  
“It made you squeal. There are a lot of sick bastards out there who’d pay good money to find out what parts to touch to make you sound like that.”  
  
“ _Seifer!_ ”  
  
“Hey. Don’t blame me for your disturbing fan club. I just wanna know what kind of trouble I’m in. Was it your…?”  
  
She couldn’t bear to hear his guesses.  
  
“My butt,” Quistis blurted out. “You touched my butt.”  
  
Seifer let out a little snort of laughter. “Really? Wouldn’t have figured you were a rear-action sort of girl.”  
  
“I’m not! I just…” She huffed in exasperation. “It surprised me and I’m still jumpy from the aura magic.”  
  
“Yeah. Me too.”   
  
Seifer sighed and she realized with a dizzy tilting of the world under her feet just how close he was standing to her. She backed as far away as she could, which wasn’t far. Her calves hit a small bench seat positioned along the wall with only one step back. She sank down onto it and leaned her head back against the wall.  
  
“I’ve heard rumors about the side effects from the prolonged use of aura," she said, "but I’ve never felt it quite like this before.”  
  
“You’re feeling side effects? Nothing that’s going to make you degenerate me off into a black hole or something, right?”   
  
Quistis stared in his direction. “You mean you haven’t heard about how it can cause certain…feelings?”  
  
“Only A-rank SeeDs use aura, and I don’t hang out with many of those.”  
  
“Oh. Well.” Quistis had no idea how to tactfully explain this to him. “One of aura’s particular charms is that it excites all sorts of primal body systems — not just those related to magically tearing apart t-rexuars.”  
  
He made a choked noise. “Hang on. Are you saying that it makes you horny?!”  
  
Quistis winced at the way hearing him say it so bluntly only excited her more. “That’s part of why it’s a restricted spell. It’s easy to abuse, and it’s dangerous to get someone into a state where they’re capable of extreme violence simply for the sake of sexual arousal. It can go…badly.”  
  
Seifer paced quickly from one end of the tiny room to the other — only a few steps each way. He brushed her knees as he passed.  
  
“So…we just wait for the feeling to pass? How long will that take?”  
  
“I don’t know. An hour maybe? Depends.”  
  
Seifer swore.  
  
“It’s not some kind of crazy aphrodisiac. It’s not going to make me lose control or anything.”  
  
He sucked in a deep breath and paced even faster.  
  
Quistis knew she would hate herself for it, but she couldn’t help asking, “Are you feeling side effects, too?”  
  
Seifer merely swore. Viciously and at length.  
  
 _Damn_.  
  
“It might help not to dwell on it,” she offered.  
  
“So I should try to think about gross shit like…” He trailed off, apparently unable to come up with something.  
  
“Squall?” Quistis offered.  
  
Seifer scoffed. “That might work for me, but I don’t think you should even be saying his name in this state. Liable only to get you even more worked up.”  
  
Even though he couldn’t see it, Quistis rolled her eyes. “I’ve been over Squall for a while.”  
  
“Uh huh.”  
  
“It was just a brief teenage crush. I’ve moved on.”  
  
“Moved on to what?”  
  
Quistis gripped the edge of her seat hard enough to make it creak. “As you’ve pointed out, there’s no shortage of men out there who are more than willing to provide whatever I require.”  
  
“Oh yeah. I’m sure you’re hooking up with Trepies left and right. Just how often do you have ‘requirements’? Got them coming to your room on a regular service schedule?”  
  
“Seifer, this isn’t helping.”  
  
He grumbled and hit the wall with a bang. “I know.”  
  
“I think we both need to take a deep breath, relax, and settle in to wait. The power will be back on soon and this will be over.”  
  
“Fine.” He sat down on the bench seat next to her, so close their arms were touching.   
  
_Not. Helping.  
  
_ Quistis nudged him. “Can you scoot over a little?”   
  
“No. My other elbow is literally hitting the goddamn door. And don’t even think about asking me to move. This is the only place to sit in this tiny little shithole. I’m not going to stand all night just because you’re hot and bothered. You’ll just have to resist the urge to jump my bones.”  
  
Quistis pressed her lips together hard and shifted as far as she could in the other direction, but she had nowhere to escape to. Her heart beat wildly at the warmth of his arm, bared by the tank top he wore, pressing against her own. Ah…if only she’d worn her full battle gear, but she hadn’t wanted to bother with it after getting out of bed and instead had thrown on a t-shirt, leggings, and a pair of running shoes that she suspected were now thoroughly wrecked from all the water and mud.  
  
Next to her, Seifer fidgeted. She heard him set aside Hyperion, then a wet plop and he tugged off his gloves and tossed them to the floor.  
  
 _Oh, dear.  
  
_ Why did the image of his bare hands seem suddenly so erotic?  
  
She imagined him sliding his palm up her thigh, his touch so firm and strong and hot.  
  
Cursing herself, she tried to bring her thoughts back under control.  
  
Instead, her brain decided to remind her how she’d once had a crush on Seifer when they’d both been cadets. He’d hardly given her the time of day back then. But she’d spent an embarrassing amount of her time during the sexual awakening of her youth contemplating him and his impressive physique from afar. Seifer had bloomed early in life. She’d been far from alone in noticing him.   
  
Honestly, he was still handsome. Still compelling to look at.  
  
Thank goodness she didn’t actually _have_ to look at him right now with all these unwanted feelings swirling around.  
  
Though her mind was supplying plenty of images to make up for the deficit.  
  
He shifted and moved again, twisting around. Quistis couldn’t figure out what he was doing until she heard him wringing water out of something onto the floor.  
  
“Did you…” Her mouth went immediately dry. “Did you just take off your shirt?”  
  
“It’s soaking wet.”  
  
 _Oh Hyne.  
  
_ “So is mine, but I’m not over here stripping it off!”  
  
“Maybe you should. At least to dry off a bit. It’s not like I’d see anything; It’s pitch black in here.”  
  
“I _really_ don’t think getting undressed is going to be helpful right now.”  
  
“Why?” He nudged her knee with his and Quistis nearly shot through the roof. “Afraid you’ll give in to temptation?”  
  
“Between the two of us, I’m more worried about you,” she lied. In fact, he seemed to be handling the whole situation with far greater aplomb than she had imagined him capable of. She didn’t understand how he could joke and tease right now. With her every other thought circling back to his bare chest, the width of his shoulders, and how they would feel underneath her hands if she were to crawl into his lap, joking was the very last thing on her mind.   
  
Perhaps it was his way of diffusing the tension.   
  
Or maybe he simply saw her as so undesirable that no amount of aura-induced blood flow could make him think of her sexually.  
  
That idea made her so irritated that she bent down and tore off her soggy shoes.  
  
“What’re you doing?” he asked when she stood up and pulled her shirt off over her head.  
  
“Exactly what you suggested. I’m taking off all my wet clothes.”  
  
His breath caught. “I didn’t say _all_ of your clothes.”  
  
“Didn’t you? Oh well. It’s not like you’ll see anything. Right?”  
  
He shot up to his feet next to her and she could feel the heat radiating off him. He seemed to fill the entire room.   
  
“You’re right. No point sitting here freezing.”  
  
She heard a thump as he pulled off his boots. And then, the sound loud as a gunshot, she heard the zipper on his pants slide down.   
  
_No._ He wouldn’t.  
  
The rustle of fabric filled Quistis’s ears like a roar. Seifer hopped once on one foot and then straightened again, his pleased superiority so clear that she could make it out even in the dark. She could fairly _see_ the smirk curving his lips.  
  
“Ahh! Much better,” he said with obvious relish.  
  
 _Too_ much relish...  
  
Had he taken off his underwear, too?  
  
Quistis had to reach out and brace herself against the wall. For a terrifying, dizzy moment she thought she might pitch forward right into his arms. His bare, firm, imminently capable arms…  
  
Hyne, she bet he’d be a rough lover. Fast and ruthless but also thorough. She’d taught him long enough to understand that he only appeared to half-ass things. His one fault as a SeeD candidate has been his inability to follow orders. As a soldier, in his form and his understanding and his tactics, he’d been exceptional. He did things with passion and skill. Around Garden, it was common parlance to suppose that people “fuck the same way they fight.” If the theory held merit, then Seifer would make for an earth-shattering bed partner.  
  
Not that she would _ever_ find out.   
  
Quistis shook her head hard, hoping to knock some common sense loose.  
  
“How about you? Feeling any better?” he asked, breaking the silence.  
  
“No.” She didn’t trust herself to say much more than that, but as usual, Seifer was not about to let her off so easily.  
  
“What’s bothering you the most?”  
  
“Everything! I’m glad this is such a walk in the park for you, but I’m not finding it so easy.”  
  
“I never said this was easy.”  
  
“You’re sure acting like it is.”  
  
“Maybe I’m more used to holding back than you are.”  
  
Quistis snorted. “Oh please. You’ve never held back on anything in your life.”  
  
“You might be surprised.”  
  
“Give me one example of something you wanted that you didn’t just immediately take.”  
  
“Right now, one thing in particular is coming to mind.”  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“You don’t want to know.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because if I say it out loud, I’m going to--” His words choked off and he made a low noise that might have been agony, pleasure, or both. Either way, it set Quistis on fire. She struggled to find her breath.   
  
Seifer swore softly.  
  
“Are you naked right now?” he asked, a desperate and fragile tone to his voice.  
  
“Are you?” she whispered.  
  
He wavered toward her and then caught himself against the wall, but not before their bodies brushed -- her breasts, bound in a damp sports bra, to the searing expanse of his chest.   
  
Quistis reached for him before she could stop herself. In the back of her mind, she knew that the effects of the aura spell would begin to wear off soon if she just controlled herself. But the moment her palms touched bare skin, desire surged hard and insistent through her veins, pushing resistance even further out of her grasp. Dizzy with wanting, she whimpered.  
  
Seifer’s chest swelled underneath her hands as he sucked in a deep breath. His heartbeat pounded against her palm.   
  
“No one has to know,” he said softly.  
  
The darkness threatened to swallow Quistis.   
  
“What?”  
  
His hands covered hers, holding them against his chest. “It’s so dark; I could be anyone. It doesn’t have to be me you’re thinking about.”  
  
Quistis choked on her reply.  
  
He moved closer.  
  
Every part of her body was melting. Warmth pooled between her legs. She didn’t have the willpower to resist.  
  
Her hands slid up, found his shoulders. His own drifted down her arms, leaving shivery gooseflesh in their wake, and then traced down her sides to her hips.  
  
“ _Oh, god_.” She surged up against him, pressing her whole body flush to his.   
  
He growled, squeezed her hips, and thrust against her.  
  
Stars burst before her eyes.  
  
He was already hard. And not just a little. It struck her for a moment how profoundly the aura spell must have aroused him before her own intense, unruly needs wiped all coherent thought from her mind.  
  
Arms wrapped around the back of his neck, Quistis moaned from deep within her chest and ground back against him.  
  
He cursed, slipped both hands around to cup her bottom, and hauled her up higher up his body until they fit together nicely -- every thrust pressing straight against her anxious, hungry core.   
  
“Ah, fuck. That feels good,” he bit out close to her ear.  
  
Quistis buried her face against his shoulder.  
  
“Harder,” she breathed. Every movement only pitched her higher, made her desire all the sharper. Through her clothes, she was going to need so much more to find relief.   
  
Seifer groaned and dragged her down onto the floor. The cold metal against Quistis’s back made her arch right into him as he came down on top of her.  
  
“Yes,” he murmured encouragingly and caught her underneath the small of her back. “Take what you need.”  
  
Taking his words to heart, Quistis wrapped her legs around him and trailed both hands down his back to get a grip on his hips. She was mildly discouraged to discover that he hadn’t taken off his underwear after all, but it hardly mattered a moment later when he used the arm looped around her to hold her halfway up off the floor and began to thrust against her in earnest.  
  
Balanced on her shoulders, Quistis tilted her head back against the floor and made a long, low noise of absolute wanton abandon.  
  
She was wet, muddy, locked in a closet in the dark with Seifer Almasy...and somehow she’d never been more turned on in her life.  
  
Because despite what Seifer had said -- that in the dark, she could pretend he was anyone she wanted -- she was intensely aware that the body undulating against hers belonged to him. That it was _his_ breath in her ear. _His_ muscles flexing underneath her hands with every thrust. _His_ hard length nestled between her legs.  
  
She knew she shouldn’t be here doing this with him.  
  
But the faint air of perversity only made it hotter.  
  
She cried out and bucked underneath him.  
  
His mouth dragged down the side of her neck, his own urgent and desperate sounds muffled by her skin.   
  
The tension inside of her pulled suddenly taut. She gasped, aware of a wave of vibrating energy paused at the brink of inevitability. She could not stop it now. Eyes pinched shut, her hands clawing at Seifer’s back, she arched up off the floor as it crashed into her.  
  
Wave after wave washed over her, pulling her deep into a dark ocean of pleasure.  
  
Seifer ground out a curse and the rhythm of his hips stuttered.   
  
The noise that he made against the side of her neck as he came sent one last powerful spasm through Quistis’s core before she fell back against the floor in a breathless heap.  
  
Braced on his arms above her, Seifer let out a trembling breath before trying to move off her and cursing when he rolled into the wall with a bang. He slipped away, off into the dark, and Quistis wondered where he’d gone as she lay alone on the floor, her whole body a sensitive, trembling mess.  
  
For a moment, she didn’t move and neither did he.  
  
As her body began to slow, a profound lethargy came over her limbs. Her muscles felt like gelatin, her blood sluggish and thick. Some of it, she knew, was the effect of the aura spell wearing all the way off. It always left her feeling wrung out afterward. But this exhaustion was different than that. Less weary and more peaceful.   
  
The squawk of the Garden PA interrupted her satisfied repose.  
  
“ _Attention_ ,” came Nida’s voice. “ _The situation on the B-level is now under control. The failure of our main engine sparked a fire which has now been contained. Repairs are ongoing, but electricity will be restored momentarily. The dormitory remains unaffected and we expect to be operational again soon. Thank you.”  
  
_ Seifer snorted derisively. “Not exactly in the nick of time, but at least we won’t be here all night.”  
  
A second later, the door buzzed and a harsh, fluorescent light flickered on.  
  
What it illuminated after it finished burning the back of Quistis’s eyes made her want to curl up in a ball with embarrassment. The safe room was hardly better than a maintenance closet -- an unfurnished metal room aside from the seat along the wall which, in the unforgiving light, looked distressingly like a bus seat. A single filing cabinet along the back wall held supplies. Her shoes and shirt were spread along the far wall, Seifer’s clothes dispersed in between.  
  
As for Seifer himself, he sat with his back against the door, his knees drawn up.   
  
He had on a pair of black boxer-briefs but nothing else. His hair was a wild, wet mess. And he had mud smeared down one arm.  
  
She couldn’t bring herself to speak to him. She had no idea what to say.  
  
So she grabbed her shirt, pulled it back on, and reached for her shoes.  
  
Seifer began dressing, too.  
  
Once they’d put themselves back to rights, Quistis gestured toward the door.  
  
“I guess we should...um…”  
  
Seifer grabbed Hyperion off the floor. “I’ll walk you out.”  
  
“Okay. Sure.”  
  
With the electricity back on, the door hissed open at the touch of Seifer’s hand, revealing a wet but well-lit Training Center. Though the ground outside the door was marked with the heavy footprints of the t-rexaur that had attacked them, the animal itself was nowhere to be seen.   
  
They walked in silence, seeing no monsters along the way, and came shortly to the Training Center’s front gate.  
  
Such a quick, simple trip in the light for how perilous and impossible it had seemed in the dark.   
  
Their shoes squeaked against the tile in the hallway as they left.  
  
When they reached Garden’s main concourse, Seifer slowed, hanging back.  
  
“You go ahead,” he said and waved her away. “I’m going to do a sweep and make sure there aren’t any cadets out and about breaking curfew.”  
  
Grateful for the opportunity to escape, Quistis nodded. “Okay.”  
  
He turned his back with a grunt and she took off as fast as her legs would take her in the direction of the dormitories. She’d hoped that perhaps she’d be able to outrun what she’d done. That if she only put space between them quickly enough, it could wipe the last hour from existence.  
  
But when she got back to her room and flung herself breathlessly back against the door after it closed, the memory of his body moving over hers still blazed bright, a supernova in the night sky of her mind.   
  
Impossible to ignore. Impossible to forget.   
  
A fire that she needed to extinguish now or let it burn her forever.


	2. Into the Dark

Chapter 2: Into the Dark  
  
Seifer sipped at a cup of coffee with a scowl. He didn’t like coffee. Never had. But with as little sleep as he’d gotten the night before, he knew he was going to need some serious caffeine to get through the day. Honestly, alcohol would have hit the spot a whole lot better. But with Garden out in the middle of the goddamn ocean, he was stuck with what the cafeteria offered, and at eight in the morning, that meant coffee.  
  
Slumped in his chair, he listened with half an ear as Raijin and Fujin talked.  
  
“I heard it was a pretty big fire, ya know?” Raijin was saying.  
  
“BAD?”  
  
“Yeah. Worse than they’re letting on. I mean, we’re not moving again yet, ya know? The engine’s still out.”  
  
Seifer grunted once to ensure they thought he was involved in the conversation, then allowed his mind to wander back to the night before -- to the Training Center and the things that had happened there.  
  
He didn’t know why he kept tormenting himself like this.  
  
He’d never been more humiliated in his life, and for someone with a history like his, that was saying something.   
  
Stuck alone in a room with Quistis Trepe had to be the dream of nearly every guy in Garden. Add to the situation the fact that she’d been magically turned on and...well...the porno practically wrote itself. Yet _he_ — in all of his infinite fuckery — had only managed to dry hump her for approximately two goddamn seconds before coming in his underwear like a useless boy. And, to add insult to injury, she’d imagined that he was someone else the whole time.  
  
What a disaster.  
  
Particularly so because _he_ hadn’t imagined someone else.  
  
He’d been thinking about her the whole time.  
  
And he hadn’t stopped thinking about her since.  
  
Quistis had always been a bit of mystery to him. Once, when they’d both been cadets, he thought he detected some interest from her. Looks that lingered a little too long. A shy blush whenever he glanced her way. Those sorts of small, puppy-love type things. But he’d had a lot of girls interested in him at the time and while he’d been contemplating whether or not to do something about Quistis, she unexpectedly passed her field test and got promoted to SeeD. Then she’d been gone and out of his life for the better part of two years.  
  
By the time she came back a full fledged woman and became an instructor, any remote attraction she might have once felt for him was obviously long gone. He’d squandered his chance. And, as far as he knew, she’d never looked at him again.   
  
Until last night anyway.   
  
Though she hadn’t exactly been looking at him in the dark. If she had, he doubted that she’d have let him do what he did -- shameful and brief as it was.   
  
_Ugh._ He wanted to crawl underneath the table, curl into a ball, and die.  
  
“SEIFER!”  
  
He snapped to attention. “Huh?”  
  
Fujin and Raijin both stared at him from across the table.  
  
“You okay?” Raijin asked.  
  
“Yeah. Fine. Just didn’t sleep well last night.”  
  
“SAME.” Fujin sighed. “ANNOUNCEMENTS.”  
  
“I slept right through ‘em,” Raijin said. “I got this white noise machine a while back. I usually set it to thunder storm but it can play all sorts of sounds. Like ocean waves and birds and stuff. Really makes a difference, ya know? I’ll let you borrow it!”  
  
“Uh...thanks. But I think I’ll be fine without it.”  
  
“If you say so.” Raijin shrugged.  
  
Over Raijin’s shoulder, Seifer saw Quistis walk into the cafeteria and went immediately rigid at the sight of her.   
  
The night before, she’d been dressed casually with her hair up in a ponytail. Today however, she had on her uniform and had styled her hair the way she always used to, with some of it down framing her face and the rest pinned up to form a perky little swish behind her head. She had on her glasses, too. Very prim and instructor-like.  
  
Not at all like a woman who’d rolled in the mud with an ex-sorceress knight a few scant hours ago.  
  
She spotted him and his blood turned to ice.  
  
“I’ve gotta go get ready for my class,” he told Raijin and Fujin as he launched out of his seat. “See you guys later?”  
  
Even though he didn’t have a class to teach today, they didn’t question the lie. He’d been making a habit of getting his lessons plotted out early lately. Of all the things he did around Garden, teaching combat was by far his favorite. He even held onto a faint hope that if he did well enough at it, Cid might give him more. Maybe even let him take over part of the gunblading class from Squall.  
  
He was glad for the precedent of his own initiative to conceal his escape as he swept his tray off the table and returned it to the counter.  
  
He started quickly toward the door but out of the corner of his eye he spotted a flash of gold as Quistis weaved through the tables toward him.  
  
 _Damn it.  
  
_ He increased his pace and slipped out into the hall.   
  
“Seifer! Wait!”  
  
Caught, he groaned in agony and slowed.  
  
The quick tap of Quistis’s boots against the floor came jogging up behind him. Steeling himself to actually have to look her in the face, he took a deep breath, then turned.  
  
She froze for a moment, as if surprised he’d actually stopped, but quickly snapped out of it.   
  
“I wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”  
  
“Sure.” He crossed his arms. “What about?”   
  
She flushed and clutched both hands in front of her. “Um...about last night.”  
  
 _Crap_. This was going to be painful.  
  
“Okay,” he said slowly.  
  
She wrung her hands together for a second, then took him by the elbow and ushered him aside, out of the main flow of traffic and toward one of the fountains where the noise of the water might drown out their words to passersby.  
  
“I just...I don’t want you to think that I’m normally like that,” she said softly.  
  
“Like what? Like the sort of person who would screw around with someone like me?” he blurted out, then immediately cursed himself for it.   
  
When would he ever learn to keep his goddamn mouth shut?  
  
Quistis frowned. “That’s not what I meant. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”  
  
“Oh. Geeze. _That_ makes me feel better.”  
  
“All I’m trying to say is that what happened is not something I would normally do. Ever. I hope you aren’t taking it personally or reading too much into it. Things got so out of hand so quickly… Between how late it was and the aura magic, it could’ve been anyone.”  
  
Seifer’s heart wrenched painfully. “Anyone, huh? Well, it wasn’t anyone. It was me.”  
  
“I know. And I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”  
  
God. She was _apologizing_ to him. How much worse could this get?  
  
He shrugged, trying to look casual. “I guess it’s no big deal. It’s not like anything serious happened. We didn’t even take all our clothes off. Or kiss. Or _do_ much at all. It was nothing.”  
  
“Right.” She swallowed hard. “So, we can just move on? Act like it never happened?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Okay. Good. And you won’t tell anyone about it?”  
  
As if he was going to go around bragging about the fact that Quistis had to be magically whammied to notice him.  
  
“I won’t say anything,” he promised.  
  
Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you.”  
  
“No problem.”  
  
She stood there a moment longer looking up at him, her blue eyes huge and sparkling behind her glasses.  
  
 _Hyne_ , she was pretty. He hadn’t had much occasion to notice it lately, but Quistis was objectively knock-out beautiful.   
  
His gaze drifted to the lapels of her jacket and to the smooth column of her throat. The memory of his mouth pressed _just there_ as he rocked against her hit him hard. A brief sigh, thick with longing, escaped him before he could stop it.  
  
Quistis’s lips parted.  
  
And then someone called out her name.  
  
They leapt away from each other and turned to see Squall walking up. Chicken Wuss trailed behind him, lugging a huge red duffel bag.  
  
Quistis flashed them a charming smile. “Good morning.” She gestured at the bag. “Is something going on?”  
  
“I’m sending Zell down to help work on the engine,” Squall replied. “I was hoping you could go with him.”  
  
“Of course. I’ll have to grab something to eat first, but then I’m free for the rest of the day.”  
  
“Great.” Squall glanced at Seifer with a glint of surprise, seeming to notice him standing there for the first time. “Seifer...why don’t you go along, too? I was going to ask Irvine, but since you’re right here…”  
  
Seifer hesitated.   
  
The B-levels of Garden were dirty and dangerous, infested by all sorts of nasty creatures who liked heat, darkness, and oil. Though the thought of tangling with whatever decided to crawl out of Garden’s bowels bothered him a lot less than the fact that he would be stuck spending the rest of his day with Quistis and Zell.   
  
Squall gave him a hopeful look and Seifer knew the choice had already been made for him.  
  
He recognized exactly what this was: a chance to do more. To show that he was capable and could be trusted. A step toward all the things that he wanted for himself in Garden.  
  
He gritted his teeth and forced a smile through them.  
  
“Okay,” he managed to reply. “When do we leave?”  
  
“As soon as you’re ready,” Squall said. “I want Zell on this ASAP. The engine’s in pretty rough shape.”  
  
Zell nodded in agreement. “The fire when it failed was pretty big. It even set off the sprinklers in the Training Center! Good thing it happened so late at night and nobody was in there.”  
  
Quistis looked for a moment like she might fold in upon herself.  
  
“Yeah. Sounds like a real mess,” Seifer replied.  
  
“You have no idea,” Zell said. “It’s a total mud pit.”  
  
They agreed to meet in front of the elevator in ten minutes and went their separate ways to prepare for the mission. Seifer fetched Hyperion from his room and arrived early. Zell was already there.  
  
He immediately leveled Seifer with a hostile glare. “I know Squall is trying to give you a second chance and all, but I don’t trust you and I’ll leave you behind down there if I have to. This engine has to be fixed if we want to do anything but drift aimlessly around the ocean. So no messing around. Alright?”  
  
“Chill, Chicken Wuss. I’ll be on my best behavior. I swear.”  
  
“You’d better,” Zell grumbled.  
  
Seifer rolled his eyes and leaned against the wall to wait.  
  
After a moment, Zell asked, “So, what were you talking to Quistis about?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“When me and Squall walked up. I didn’t think you two ever hung out or talked or anything.”  
  
“We don’t. I was…” He latched onto the first lie he could think of. “I was asking her for help with my class.”  
  
Zell’s eyebrows shot up. “Your combat class?”  
  
“Yeah. Not with the combat part. I’ve got that. More administrative stuff. Grades and lesson plans. That sort of shit. Figured she was the only instructor who might be willing to offer me any advice.”  
  
“Oh.” Zell chewed this over for a moment. “Quistis is real nice like that.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
As if summoned by their compliments, Qusitis walked up then. She had her whip coiled at her waist and was finishing a bagel smeared with strawberry cream cheese. She licked a bit of cream off her thumb and smiled at them brightly. “Ready to go?”  
  
While Seifer tried -- and failed -- not to think about Qusitis’s tongue, Zell opened the access panel to the B-level and started down the ladder. Quistis followed, leaving Seifer to bring up the rear.   
  
He’d heard about the B-level but had never been there himself and had to admit to some amazement as the area underneath the floor opened up into a vast, dark cavern filled with ladders and catwalks. It smelled like dust, gasoline, and hot metal.   
  
“Do you know where we’re going?” Quistis asked Zell.  
  
“Yeah. Follow me.”  
  
Zell started off, his tool bag hitched over one shoulder. Quistis put one hand to Save the Queen and followed. Seifer fell into step beside her.  
  
Discounting the spiders -- some of which were absolutely massive -- they didn’t see much worth fighting and arrived after perhaps a thirty minute walk at a huge, smoldering engine. Signs of the fire were everywhere, from scorch marks climbing the walls to foamy puddles on the floor from the fire suppression system.  
  
A small team of people wielding hammers and wrenches stood about, banging on things here and there, generally looking puzzled. They all breathed an obvious sigh of relief when Zell arrived.  
  
“Is Chicken Wuss really the best mechanic we’ve got?” Seifer asked.  
  
Quistis leaned in to reply, “He took some time off after the war to study Garden technology in FH. He’s pretty good at this.”  
  
“What are we going to do while he works?”  
  
“Watch the perimeter.” She waved to a couple other SeeDs who appeared to already be on watch. “We’ll take that area over there.” She pointed to the other side of the engine where no one else was standing.   
  
They walked around to their positions and Quistis peered over the railing down into Balamb Garden’s deep and mysterious depths once before leaning back, apparently satisfied that nothing was going to crawl up out of the darkness to get them.  
  
Seifer propped Hyperion against his shoulder and watched her.  
  
She studiously avoided his gaze.  
  
He sighed. “I’m no good at waiting around like this.”  
  
“I know. It’s why you failed your last field exam.”  
  
 _True._ “You have to admit though, I was right about Dollet.”  
  
“For all the good it did you. The Galbadians still managed to activate the radio tower, sent a giant robot spider after your squad, and everyone barely escaped with their lives. If you’d taken a risk like that and changed the outcome of the battle, you might not have been docked so much. But you put your whole team in danger and didn’t gain a single thing for it.”  
  
No one had ever put it to him in quite that way.  
  
“If I’d been more free to modify our orders in the field, then maybe we _could_ have made a difference.”  
  
“Maybe,” Quistis allowed. “But it doesn’t matter now.”  
  
Because he’d failed and promptly tumbled down the slippery slope into being a war criminal. He often wondered if things would have been different had he passed. Would he have still been so easily swayed by Edea at the TV station if he hadn’t felt like he had so much to prove?  
  
Quistis was right, he supposed. It didn’t matter now.  
  
What was done was done.  
  
They stood in silence for a while, watching the shadows while Zell and the other workmen labored over the engine behind them.  
  
His impatience at having nothing to do must have shown, because eventually Quistis turned to him and asked, “Why did you agree to come along anyway? You obviously don’t want to be here. You’ve been fidgeting like crazy. Is it my presence that’s bothering you?”  
  
“You? No. I’m here because I figure that if I’m a good little ex-sorceress knight, Commander Puberty Boy might give me more classes to teach. If I’ve got to take on a few lame missions to get that, then so be it.”  
  
“Lame?” She shook her head and turned away from him, her arms crossed tight across her chest. “Of course you’d say that.”  
  
“It _is_ lame. We’re standing around doing nothing while Zell plays with a monkey wrench.”  
  
She huffed. “Never mind. Forget I even asked.”  
  
What the hell? Had he said something wrong?  
  
“Is this about last night?”  
  
“ _No._ ”  
  
He knew enough about women to recognize that her answer had been far too quick. She was definitely pissed off about something from the night before. He could guess what.  
  
“Listen…” He shifted closer to her and dropped his voice. “You should know that I’m not normally like that either. I swear, I don’t usually do it anywhere even _close_ to that fast. I can't explain why it happened. But it's nowhere _near_ typical for me, sexually speaking.”  
  
Quistis turned to face him, her cheeks on fire. “Oh my God. You’re worried that I think you…? Seifer. I’m not. It hadn’t even occurred to me. And even if it had, I could hardly blame you. I wasn’t exactly left...unsatisfied.”  
  
Heat coiled low in his belly.  
  
 _She’d come._   
  
He’d thought she had, but he hadn’t been totally sure.   
  
He had to clear his throat before he could speak again.   
  
“That’s probably thanks to the aura spell, right? The...uh...speedy finish?”  
  
She hadn’t stopped blushing. “Probably.”  
  
“Has it ever happened to you before? During the war or something?”  
  
“No! Of course not!”  
  
“But you used aura a lot during the war. Right?”  
  
“Yeah. But I never… It’s not like I went out with Zell and killed a ruby dragon and then tackled him in the bushes.” She sounded horrified at the mere idea, which gave Seifer a flash of hope. “Last night was an aberration,” she continued. “A perfect storm of bizarre circumstances that will never repeat themselves.”  
  
“But you said it had nothing to do with me,” he pressed. “So if it _had_ been Zell locked in that safe room with you, the same thing would’ve happened?”  
  
She opened her mouth to reply and then closed it, her eyes flashing with irritation.  
  
The answer was clearly no, even if she wouldn’t admit it.  
  
At least he had that much going for him: he was more desirable than Zell. Though that wasn’t saying much.  
  
“Hang on. Zell was a bad example. What about...I don’t know...that Galbadian guy who’s always hanging around the Messenger Girl?”  
  
She planted both hands on her hips and glared at him. “You really need to start using people’s names.”  
  
“Answer the question, _Quistis_.”  
  
He had to know. Was this a _you’re-not-the-grossest-guy-I-know_ sort of thing or more along the lines of _I-actually-find-you-pretty-attractive_? If it was the former, he’d walk away and leave her alone. But the latter...well, he almost didn’t dare to hope it was the latter.   
  
Her jaw flexed.   
  
“I don’t know what would’ve happened if it was someone else,” she finally said in a furious whisper. “Because it wasn’t. It was you. And, you know what? I’m glad it was you. Because if it had been Irvine, it might’ve ruined our friendship. But with you I’ve got nothing to lose.”  
  
 _Ouch_. Okay. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed his luck.  
  
“Can we please just let it go now?” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”  
  
“Alright!” He held up his hands in surrender and went back to his pointless look-out duty.   
  
Despite her protestations, Quistis evidently was not done discussing the matter because half a second later she jabbed a finger at him and demanded, “What about you?”  
  
Seifer arched an eyebrow. “What _about_ me?”  
  
“If it had been someone else in the room with you besides me, would the same thing have happened?”  
  
“I don’t know. Maybe.”  
  
She visibly bristled at that. “Who were you thinking of?”  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
She crossed her arms, locking them protectively over her chest. “The whole ‘you can pretend it’s someone else in the dark’ thing was your idea. You must’ve had someone in mind when you brought it up.”  
  
“I brought it up because I thought it would help _you_ , not me. I wasn’t fantasizing about someone else.”  
  
She pursed her lips, still fuming, but he could tell she was beginning to lose some steam. That had clearly been the right thing to say. Did that mean she didn’t want him thinking of other women? That she cared about what he felt or what went on inside his head? God, this all had him turned him upside down.  
  
“Is that why you gave into it?” he asked her, afraid what the answer might be. “Did you imagine I was someone else and it pushed you over the edge?”  
  
She softened a little more. “I wasn’t thinking about anyone else either.”  
  
“Were you thinking about _me_?” he asked quietly.  
  
She bit her lip and he could make out the wild thrumming of her heart at the base of her throat. He moved a little closer, curious how she’d respond, and was heartened when she didn’t step away. He wanted so badly to reach for her but didn’t dare.  
  
He stopped just shy of touching her, well within her personal space but not yet totally violating it.   
  
He dipped his head close, his voice a low rumble when he added, “I was most definitely thinking about you.”  
  
Quistis’s mouth dropped open. “I...um…”  
  
“Hey, guys!” Zell’s voice echoed down from high up on top the engine. Seifer swore under his breath and glanced up to see the annoying blonde's head peek over a railing at them. “Can you do me a favor?”  
  
“Sure, Zell!!” Quistis called back. She’d already put space between them, her retreat instant the moment she’d heard Zell’s voice. “What do you need?”  
  
“I need to cycle the power. There’s a control room down that ladder right over there where you ought to be able to do it. Can you go down and flip the switch? It’s big and red. Can’t miss it!”  
  
Quistis eyed the ladder he’d indicated, then gave Zell a thumbs up. “Okay! We’re on it!”  
  
“Thanks!”  
  
Zell vanished back over the other side of the railing.  
  
Quistis started toward the ladder and Seifer moved to follow.  
  
Immediately she put a hand out to stop him. It landed right in the middle of his chest, her fingers splayed out over his heart in a way that made him suck in a sharp breath.  
  
She pulled her hand back and shook it like she’d been burned. “What’re you doing?”  
  
“Going with you.”  
  
“I don’t need any help. I’m just flipping a breaker.”  
  
“Chicken Wuss told both of us to go and I’m trying to be good about following orders.”  
  
Her jaw clenched once, then relaxed. “Fine.”  
  
The rickety ladder they had to go down seemed a bigger threat to Seifer than any of the monsters that might be lurking about. The bolts holding it to the wall rattled alarmingly as they descended, like it might fall at any moment and send them tumbling into the abyss.  
  
Just what they needed. To be trapped together again in a dark, out of the way corner of Garden. Who knew what would happen?  
  
 _Great. Now I’m getting turned on by the thought of being stuck in a basement_.  
  
This whole situation was getting really out of hand.  
  
The ladder brought them to a perilous catwalk that rattled as they walked down it toward a small room positioned at the end. It had thick windows, a heavy metal door, and electronic panels all over the walls.  
  
“That must be the control room,” Quistis said.  
  
She grabbed the door handle and gave it a tug. It didn’t budge.   
  
Seifer peered over her shoulder. “Is it locked?”  
  
“No. Just wedged.” She braced her feet against the catwalk and pulled harder. “All the doors down here are like this. Honestly, it’s amazing Garden runs as well as it does. I don’t think anyone has ever bothered to do any maintenance since the day this place was built.”  
  
The door still refused to budge, no matter how hard Quistis pulled.  
  
“Here.” Seifer nudged her aside. “Let me try.”  
  
The catwalk was so narrow that Quistis had to turn sideways to let him pass. She leaned back against the railing, practically folding over the side to make room, but it didn’t matter. They brushed together -- chest to chest -- as he sidled past.  
  
Quistis bit her lip and closed her eyes.  
  
Seifer would’ve given almost anything to know what she was thinking.  
  
Shame and regret at being forced to touch him again? Or was that arousal, fueled by memories of a hasty coming together that could have been so much more?  
  
He wished he’d given her more.  
  
He wished he’d given her everything.  
  
A little breathless, he turned his back on her and focused on the door. It seemed to be sticking at the top, so he pushed his weight down on the handle and gave it a strong jerk. The door scraped open with a metallic screech, revealing the small control room beyond. A spider the side of his palm skittered up the far wall and through a hole where it squatted, the tips of two hairy legs sticking out.  
  
Okay. Maybe being trapped down here wouldn’t be so sexy after all.  
  
Quistis followed him in and looked over all the switches on the control panel. “This one must be it,” she said and put her hand on a large, red lever. She pulled it down, waited a moment, then flipped it back up.  
  
Above them, something huge and mechanical began to hum.  
  
“That’s it? We done?”  
  
“I think so. Let’s head back up.”  
  
Seifer shut the door behind them, having to kick it to get it back in place, and then they started down the catwalk again, toward the ladder.  
  
When they arrived back at the engine, it was buzzing with power and the mechanics were all talking excitedly as Zell finished tightening a bolt. Finally, he stood back, brushed his hands off on his shorts, and called out to one of the other workers: “Okay! Start it up!”  
  
Quistis elbowed Seifer gently in the side. “You’re going to want to cover your ears for this.”  
  
He did, but it hardly made any difference. The massive engine started up with a roar that rippled his clothes.  
  
Zell punched a fist in the air and whooped in victory, his cry utterly lost in the cacophony.   
  
Their job done, everyone left together in one mass exodus. Seifer and Quistis, by lieu of their position on the other side of the engine, brought up the rear of the pack. Once Seifer’s ears stopped ringing, he made out some of the others up ahead congratulating Zell on a job well done.  
  
“Let’s all get lunch to celebrate!” Zell called out, waving dramatically at the whole group.  
  
Seifer didn’t think that the invitation included him, but thirty minutes later he found himself squeezed in between Quistis and some SeeD he’d never seen before in the cafeteria, listening to everyone around him talk shop about engine repair.   
  
Since he had nothing to add to the conversation, he ate quietly and dwelled on how close Quistis’s thigh was to his...and how her chest expanded against her clothes every time she breathed...and how her fingers gripped her fork so delicately...and how much more tempting every part of her looked than his lunch...  
  
Ah, hell.  
  
He had to find a way to stop looking at her like this because the chances she would ever return those looks were slim to none. And even if she had returned them -- just for a few seconds under the influence of powerful magic -- that wasn’t a moment that was going to repeat itself.  
  
It was over. He needed to move on.   
  
Allowing himself to dream about Quistis Trepe was just asking for heartbreak.


	3. The Scientific Method

Chapter 3: The Scientific Method  
  
Quistis threw herself down on her bed and draped her arm over her eyes. Her pulse throbbed in her ears, its rate far too quick and her breath too short to be blamed solely on the speed with which she’d fled from the cafeteria to her room.  
  
Swirls of color danced behind her eyelids. Amongst them stewed all the thoughts she had been determined to put behind her today.  
  
She’d woken up that morning convinced that she had pulled herself back together. She’d been in control and rational, armed with a plan to address what had happened head on and prove that it had all been a magical fluke. But all of that self-assurance, built up over hours overnight, had come tumbling down the moment Seifer looked at her.  
  
Now she didn’t know what to think.  
  
She had no doubt that the aura spell was to blame for what had happened. In her right mind, she never would have given in to such sudden and inexplicable passion. Ever since embarrassing herself so thoroughly with Squall, she’d become wary of putting herself out there and carefully moderated her conduct around men. She simply didn’t trust desire anymore, let alone act on it.  
  
So it hadn’t been difficult to conclude that much of what she’d felt and done with Seifer had been pure magic and nothing else.  
  
Then he’d asked her to imagine it had been with someone else.  
  
And...she couldn’t.  
  
Maybe she couldn’t imagine someone else in his place _because_ the whole scenario had been created by a spell. With him, she had the memories. With anyone else, she had to conjure those images on her own and clearly she wasn’t capable of doing that. It only proved how much the spell had been controlling her.  
  
Right?  
  
Quistis scrubbed her arm across her face and groaned.  
  
Even in her own mind, that line of thought sounded desperate at best. Perhaps it was time to admit to some attraction.  
  
She couldn’t honestly say that she’d never thought of Seifer that way. For a while, she’d liked him for all the same reasons she liked Squall. They had both been talented, upcoming gunbladists, poised to become the most powerful SeeDs in Garden. The sheer potential she saw in them had been intensely attractive.  
  
But Seifer’s personality had always been a problem. He’d been cocky as her peer and insufferable as her student. After a while, the antagonism with which he approached her ate away all of her affection. She decided he wasn’t worth the effort, pushed him out of her mind, and forgot him.   
  
Or, she thought she did.  
  
Could the memory of the flame she’d once carried for him be what the aura spell had magnified? Were these just echoes from the past coming back to haunt her?  
  
If they were, they were certainly taking their sweet time fading out again. Seifer barely needed to glance at her to start a whole new reverberation.  
  
 _Damn it._ She was no good at this.  
  
She needed advice.  
  
There was only one person she could think of to ask.   
  
Quistis rolled off her bed, went down the hall, and knocked on Xu’s door.  
  
It slid open a moment later to reveal Xu in her uniform skirt and boots, her jacket unzipped and her tie undone.   
  
“Hey, Quis! Come in. I just got off duty.”  
  
Since Xu was a high ranking officer, she had a suite situated as an end unit. The perk got her a sitting room with a small kitchenette, a bedroom with a balcony, and a private bathroom. By Garden standards, it was insanely luxurious. Almost enough to make Quistis consider a career in administration.   
  
“Have a seat. I’ll make some tea. Do you want black, white, or green?”  
  
Quistis flopped down on one of Xu’s big puffy chairs. “Black. Do you still have the apricot flavored one?”  
  
“I do! Cream?”  
  
“Yes please.”  
  
Xu switched on her electric kettle and fetched two mugs from her cabinet. She always made tea whenever she had “guests” in her room, even the most informal. She said it was a habit she’d picked up from her mother and Quistis found it utterly endearing that in the militant ambiance of Garden, Xu maintained this one bastion of absolutely unshakeable civility.  
  
“Did you hear? We’re finally moving again after that stupid engine blew,” Xu said as she filled their cups.  
  
“Yeah. Squall sent me down with Zell to work on it.”  
  
Xu made a face. “Ew. Sorry. I hate going down there.”  
  
She handed Quistis a steaming mug which smelled heavenly, then sat down in the chair across from Quistis’s with her own.  
  
“How did the engine look? Was it bad?”  
  
“I don’t know. It looked how it always does to me.”  
  
“I have to admit, I’m getting a little nervous about this mission. Garden’s never been put through this kind of strain before. We’ve already had one engine fail and we’re not even halfway to the Deep Sea Research Center yet. What if we lose another one? What if we can’t fix it next time?”  
  
Quistis sipped her tea. “Zell didn’t seem to have any trouble getting it fixed. I’m not too worried about getting stuck.”  
  
“Well, I’m glad you have faith. But I’m going to keep on worrying.” Xu pulled off her boots and sighed. “So, what’s up with you besides having to slum it down on B-level?”  
  
“Actually…” Quistis gripped her cup a little tighter. “I was hoping you could give me some advice.”  
  
“Sure. Professional? Or personal?”  
  
“Personal.”  
  
Xu’s eyes went wide. “Really? Okay. Shoot.”  
  
Quistis had to take a second to gather her courage before she managed to ask, “Have you ever felt any side effects from using aura?”  
  
Xu nearly choked on her tea. “Um. Not personally, no. But I’ve heard the rumors. Did you...uh...experience side effects?”  
  
Quistis bit her lip and nodded.  
  
“Oh my God! When? How?! Was this something that happened today down on the B-level?”  
  
“No. This was...a while ago. In the Training Center.”  
  
Xu scooted forward to the edge of her chair. “Okay. So...tell me more! What happened?”  
  
Thankfully, Quistis already had this lie well prepared. “I was using aura to practice my blue magic. It must have started to get to me because I spotted this guy there and all of the sudden he seemed really, like... _insanely_ attractive.”  
  
“Did you do anything?”  
  
“No. But I wanted to.” Quistis felt her cheeks flush. “I’ve never felt anything like it. The feelings were so intense.”  
  
Xu grinned. “Sounds fun.”  
  
“It’s not. Those feelings haven’t gone away. Not even once the magic wore off. I can barely even _look_ at him now without…” Quistis had grown so warm that she had to set her tea cup down.  
  
Xu frowned. “I’m not seeing why this is a problem.”  
  
“Because I can’t tell if it’s the magic or something else. I’ve used aura a lot and never had this happen. Why now? Why with him?”  
  
“Uh, probably because you must _like_ him.”  
  
“I didn’t before the spell.”  
  
“Maybe you did but you hadn’t realized it yet.”  
  
Quistis sent her friend a doubtful, deadpan look. “That’s not possible. How can you be interested in someone without knowing it?”  
  
“Subconsciously. Haven’t you ever had a seemingly random sexy dream about someone that made you suddenly realize how crazy hot they are? Same principle.”  
  
Quistis flicked a bit of hair primly over her shoulder. “That has never happened to me.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean it couldn’t. It happens to me all the time.”  
  
Quistis sighed. “This wasn’t a dream though. It wasn’t my subconscious that brought it out. It was magic. How can I ever untangle what was me and what was the spell?”  
  
“Hmm. I see your point.” Xu considered her quandary for a moment while finishing her tea. “I guess the way I see it is...aura basically works by enhancing what you’re feeling. Right? We use it for battle because that’s a situation where you’re in danger, so it heightens all of your natural responses to that. You become faster. Stronger. It takes that natural battle high and magnifies it ten-fold. Now...say you’re physically attracted to someone -- even just subconsciously. It could enhance those feelings, too. Right?”  
  
“I suppose…”  
  
“Then it stands to reason that if you had enough aura magic running through you, any guy you found attractive would start looking _really_ sexy under its influence.”  
  
“Maybe. But then wouldn’t this have happened with Squall? I used aura around him all the time when we were fighting Ultimecia.”  
  
“Probably never happened with him because that was right after he broke your heart.”  
  
“I wasn’t heartbroken…”  
  
“Yes you were. You handled it well -- way better than I would have -- but you were definitely hurt for quite a while there. And I can totally see how that might have gotten in the way of aura getting you turned on whenever you looked at him.”  
  
Quistis leaned her head back against the chair and tried to wrap her mind around what all of this might mean. “So...what happened in the Training Center is just the magic then?”  
  
“Not exactly. I don’t think aura manufactured feelings you didn’t already have.”  
  
“So, what? I’m subconsciously in love with this guy?”  
  
Xu’s eyebrows went up. “Does it feel like you’re in love with him?”  
  
Quistis blew out a breath. “I don’t know. I guess if I had to put a name to it, it would be more like infatuation.”  
  
Xu tilted her head and pressed her lips together. “Are you going to tell me who it is we’re talking about...or…?”  
  
“Not yet.”  
  
“Why? Is it someone embarrassing?”  
  
“No. I just still think it’s probably nothing. To be honest, I’m kind of hoping if I ignore it long enough, it will go away.”  
  
Xu laughed and got up to refill her teacup. “Yeah. You’re doing a great job at ignoring it.”  
  
“ _Xu_.”  
  
“Sorry. I’m trying to be supportive. But a fling wouldn’t kill you. Not every guy you develop an interest in is going to turn out the same way as Squall, you know.”  
  
“I’ve tried dating since then. It’s always been a train wreck.”  
  
“I’m not saying you should date him. Just...flirt! Enjoy yourself. Kiss him if he’s willing and move on. Keep it light.”  
  
Quistis didn’t think she could keep it light with Seifer. He wasn’t the sort of person who did things halfway.   
  
“I don’t even know if that’s what I want with this guy,” she said.  
  
Xu sighed and leaned her hip against the counter. “If you’re still so caught up on figuring out whether it’s the magic or your own feelings, why not do an experiment?”  
  
“What kind of experiment?”  
  
“Use aura again, get yourself back in that state, and see if it’s just him or if it works for other guys, too.”  
  
“You can’t be serious…”  
  
“I’m dead serious. If anyone else triggers a response -- especially someone you already know you’re attracted to -- then you’ll know it’s not unique to him and you can stop dwelling on what it means.”  
  
“But…” Quistis could barely believe her friend would even suggest such a thing. “I can’t go wandering around Garden all magically aroused like that! What if I did something I’d regret?”  
  
“I’ll stay with you and make sure nothing happens.”  
  
Quistis shook her head. “I don’t know…”  
  
She liked the idea of getting a definitive answer, and Xu’s methodology seemed sound enough. If aura made her horny for _every_ attractive man in Garden, then she could dismiss all these feelings out of hand. The fact that she kept dwelling on him, and only him, was a big part of what had her so bothered. But she didn’t care for the idea of putting herself in that state again.  
  
What if it only ended up making things worse? What if she ended up obsessed with half a dozen other guys? She barely had room in her brain for one insane crush.  
  
“I’ll think about it,” she finally said.  
  
Xu smiled. “Good. Let me know what you decide. I’m off duty for the next two days.”  
  
Quistis finished the rest of her tea and allowed Xu to make her another cup before leaving. The hour had grown late, so she picked up a to-go meal from the cafeteria before speed walking with it all the way back to her room, afraid that she might run into Seifer and make an even bigger ass out of herself.  
  
Sitting at her desk, eating chicken masala out of a plastic cup, she sighed at her own patheticness.  
  
She couldn’t go on hiding in her room forever.  
  
She was going to have to deal with this somehow.  
  
Reaching across her desk, she picked up the receiver on her phone and dialed Xu’s number.  
  
Xu answered after four rings. “Hello?”  
  
“It’s me,” Quistis said, gripping the phone hard. “I’m going to do it.”  
  
“The experiment?”  
  
“Yeah. Meet me in the morning?”  
  
“I’ll be there!”  
  
Quistis hung up not at all sure she’d made the right decision. But at least she was doing something, and that alone made her feel a little better.

* * *

The next morning, Quistis sat on her bed and trembled as Xu cast aura on her one more time. Her brain was too addled by magic to remember how many times they’d refreshed the spell now, but her nerves were so jangled that she felt like she might jump straight out of her skin. Adrenaline coursed hard through her veins and she swore she could feel her heartbeat in her eyeballs.  
  
“I think that’s enough,” Xu said and leaned back against Quistis’s desk. “How are you doing? Are you starting to get any inappropriate feelings about me?” She grinned and struck a pose.  
  
“Does wanting to kill you for teasing me count?”  
  
“Actually, it does! You’re still in control of that though. Right? Not getting shockwave pulsar-y?”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
Xu had taken possession of Save the Queen and had insisted Quistis drop all of her junctions, just to be safe. But Quistis still had access to her blue magic. It was an intrinsic part of her and made her dangerous no matter how thoroughly they unarmed her.  
  
“Do you want to wait a bit, or should we start the experiment now?” Xu asked.  
  
Quistis clutched the side of her mattress so hard her hands began to ache. “I think we should do it right away. This feels awful. I don’t want to wait too long and have to do it all over again.”  
  
“Okay. Let’s go.”  
  
Quistis got up on wobbly legs and followed her friend to the door. She wasn’t sure what would confront her on the other side, so she clenched her jaw, and prepared for the worst as the door slid open and they stepped out into the hallway.  
  
Since it was mid-morning, not a lot of people were around. They only came across a few young cadets heading to their classes, too young to be of interest in their experiment.   
  
When they emerged onto the main concourse, the thick of Garden’s crowd hit her full force.  
  
Rather than aroused, she became instantly paranoid. She couldn’t shake the sensation that something was lurking nearby, about to get her, and that she needed to find and kill it before it was too late.  
  
“Let’s sit down over there,” Xu said as Quistis frantically searched the faces around her, looking for claws or teeth or a weapon pointed in her direction.  
  
Xu led her to a bench outside the cafeteria and pushed her down onto it.  
  
“Breathe,” she advised and put a comforting hand on Quistis’s shoulder. “You’re freaking out. There’s nothing here that’s going to attack you. You’re safe. Just sit back, relax, and let other feelings float to the surface.”  
  
Easier said than done.  
  
Quistis closed her eyes and did one of the meditation exercises Dr. Kadowaki had taught her. _I am a pool of water_ , she told herself. _And my emotions are the fish. I am not the fish, I am the water…  
  
_ With steady, calming breaths, her pulse began to slow.  
  
“I didn’t feel this agitated before,” she admitted.  
  
Xu looked concerned. “I hope we didn’t use too much magic.”  
  
“I think it seems different because then I had a real monster to fight. Right now it’s just making me anxious.”  
  
Xu squeezed her shoulder in sympathy, then straightened when she spotted someone. “Hey! Look!. Here comes a good first test subject.”  
  
Xu pointed at a SeeD walking toward them. Quistis vaguely recognized him but didn’t know him personally. He had dark hair that he’d clearly spent quite a bit of time artfully spiking into a deliberately messy style. A girl walked with him. He smiled down at her with squeaky clean charm.  
  
She quickly pronounced her verdict. “Nice but boring.”  
  
Xu pursed her lips. “Hm. Less nice. Okay.” She looked around some more. “How about him?”  
  
Xu pointed to one of the magic theory instructors. At thirty three, he was one of the older men on staff. He had a dark complexion, short cropped hair, a chiseled face, and a reputation for being aloof. Quistis could see why Xu had picked him. He was handsome in a rugged, mysterious sort of way.  
  
But Quistis didn’t feel any desire when she looked at him.  
  
She shook her head.  
  
“Seriously? Nothing?” Xu sighed. “Well. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, because I think just about everyone with a pulse feels it with him. That man is sex personified.”  
  
“You sure you didn’t cast a few of those aura spells on yourself?” Quistis asked.  
  
Xu grinned. “Thankfully, I don’t require magic to think horny thoughts.”  
  
Quistis rolled her eyes and they sat a while longer, watching idly as people strolled by.   
  
With every man that passed her, Quistis grew more and more irritated. Why the hell were they all so damn undesirable? With this kind of competition, it was hardly a surprise that Seifer had caught her eye. He seemed to be the only one in the entire building who didn’t make her feel totally apathetic.  
  
A few she would admit were at least superficially attractive. Even mildly interesting. But none of them sparked anything inside of her.  
  
Surely there had to be at least _one_ other person in this damn school who she could be convinced to rub against in a dark room.  
  
“Oh my God.” Xu tensed. “Here comes Squall.”  
  
Sweet Hyne. Quistis didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified. If there was anyone in Garden likely to trigger latent sexual desire in her and prove that what was happening with Seifer was all a magically induced bit of insanity, it was Squall. But it had taken her a lot of time to get over him.   
  
Did she really want to risk bringing that back into her life again?  
  
In the end, Squall made the choice for her by walking right up to them in an unusual display of affability.  
  
“Morning,” he said with a nod to them both. “You guys off today?”  
  
Xu tossed her arm over the back of the bench and leaned back, crossing her legs. “Yep! You?”  
  
As Xu and Squall made small talk, Quistis braced herself for the powerful wave of attraction that was sure to hit her. Squall looked as good as he always did -- all brooding and blue eyed and leather-clad, to say nothing of his hair which existed in a constant state of unearthly perfection. She’d seen him in all sorts of deplorable states during the war, and even fresh off being tortured in prison, his hair had looked shiny and flawless. He had on his jacket with the fur collar too, which she had once loved so much.  
  
How many times had she dreamed of burying her face in that ruff as he pulled her close? Too many to count.   
  
Her mind should have been overflowing with remembered desire.  
  
Instead, she felt a brief flash of affection followed by a powerful sense of restlessness that made her want to leap to her feet, start running, and not stop until she found what she was looking for. What she was looking for, she had no idea. A fight, maybe.  
  
 _Oh man. A hard, sweaty battle sounds really good right now_.   
  
“Well, enjoy your down time,” Squall was saying to Xu. “I’ve got to go sit in on a faculty meeting.” He mentioned the meeting with a tone of such absolute loathing that Xu burst out laughing.   
  
“Good luck with that.”  
  
“Thanks.” He waved and turned to go.  
  
Once he was out of earshot, Xu turned to Quistis, her eyes wide with anticipation. “So? Did you feel it? Do you want to go pull him into a closet somewhere?”  
  
“No. I don’t.”   
  
Xu’s face fell. “Damn. I thought he was going to be a sure thing.”  
  
“Me too.” Quistis got up off the bench and paced in frustration. “Look...this obviously isn’t working. The aura spell isn’t affecting me the same way again. All it’s doing is making me paranoid and angry.”  
  
“I guess it makes sense that it might be a rare and weird reaction for you since you’ve only ever felt it that one time,” Xu said, holding up her hands helplessly. “What do you want to do? Stick it out a while longer here, or…?”  
  
Quistis shook her head. “Thanks, but all I really want to do is head to the Training Center and burn off some of this energy. See if I can rip into some monsters and get the rest of this stupid spell out of my system.”  
  
“Do you want me to come along?”  
  
“No. I’ll be fine.”  
  
“Are you sure? If you’re still under the influence, it might be good to have someone with you.”  
  
“I’d rather be alone.”  
  
“Alright, well...walk away if you find yourself wildly attracted to any random guys in there. Okay?”  
  
“If that was going to happen, it would have already. I just need to get out of this crowd and _kill_ something.” Her skin was crawling with the movement and noise around her, all of it grating on her heightened senses. She wanted to be alone in the silence of the Training Center, grounded by battle and blood and the smell of the earth.  
  
Xu got up off the bench. She looked contrite as she reached out and touched Quistis’s arm. “Sorry this didn’t work out. Maybe it was a bad idea.”  
  
Quistis shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”  
  
“I’m going to head to the library for a while. I’ll stop by the Training Center and check on you when I’m done, just to make sure you’re alright.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Xu handed over her whip and lingered for a second, watching as Quistis headed off.  
  
Having the sinuous length of Save the Queen in her hands again made Quistis sigh with relief. Here, _finally_ , was something that felt right and good. She jogged down the green stripe on the floor that would take her to the Training Center.  
  
She hadn’t been back since the night of the fire and walked in to find the entire wing just as much of a muddy mess as Zell had said. Huge fans running on the ceiling sought to air it out but there was only so much they could do. The air tasted thick with moisture. Just inside the door, a combat class had claimed the only obvious bit of dry ground to practice on.  
  
Quistis paused for a moment, trying to decide what route she could take that might prove the least soggy, when the stern, authoritative voice of the combat instructor reached her ears.  
  
“Get your ass back in there, Cadet!”  
  
Quistis’s stomach dropped to her knees and she turned to see Seifer striding through the group, correcting form and barking tips, as he advanced on one boy in particular who was standing back and pointing accusingly at his sparring partner.  
  
“She’s cheating!” the boy protested.  
  
“There’s no such thing. Fighting fair will just get you killed. Now apologize to your partner for trying to rat her out and start again.”  
  
Seifer stood back and watched with a hard, uncompromising look on his face as the two bowed to one another and began their session over. He had on black pants and a black tank top which showed off the definition in his arms as he crossed them. The dark color nicely complemented the gold of his hair and the warm tone of his skin. Since he had his back to her, she found herself admiring his trim waist, broad shoulders, and firm bottom -- details often obscured by the long coats he liked to wear.  
  
Holy hell, he looked good.  
  
She knew he’d begun teaching one of the combat classes but had never seen him in action before. Drawing closer to the group, she watched in fascination as the man who had defied her so often in her classroom ran his own with surprising control and confidence. The cadets all deferred to him instantly and watched in rapt silence whenever he demonstrated a skill.  
  
Honestly, Quistis couldn’t blame them.   
  
Nobody fought with the same natural, fluid grace as Seifer.   
  
He had a body built for war and he knew how to use it.  
  
She bet he would be just as amazing at doing other things with it, too.  
  
Slowly melting, caught up in vivid daydreams about all the ways she would like to test his proficiency, she watched him until he called out to the class, dismissing them for the day.  
  
One girl lingered behind as the others walked off. Seifer was occupied jotting down performance notes on a clipboard and didn’t immediately notice her as she waited, her hands clasped behind her back, her body swaying impatiently as she rocked on and off her toes.  
  
“Mr. Almasy?” the girl said.  
  
Since he wasn’t an actual instructor, his class didn’t address him as such.  
  
His head snapped up. “Yes? Do you need something, Cadet?”  
  
The girl hesitated and Quistis could tell that his sharp response was not what she had hoped for. The girl pressed her lips together and walked up to him.  
  
“I was hoping that maybe you could help me a little. You know...outside of class.”  
  
“There are peer tutors if you need one.”  
  
The girl advanced a step closer. “I know that. But they’re not as good as you are and I want to be the best. I only want to train with _you_.”  
  
Seifer’s shoulders squared at the compliment and Quistis moved forward immediately to intervene.  
  
“If you need extra training and don’t want to work with a tutor, you’ll need to sign up on the EC board for a spot in one of the other instructors’ small groups,” she said firmly. “Mr. Almasy isn’t currently running any. As I’m sure you are perfectly aware.”  
  
The girl went pale. “Oh! Okay. Thank you, Instructor Trepe.”  
  
Quistis gestured the girl away. “Get going before you’re late to your next class.”  
  
The girl nodded and darted off.  
  
Seifer turned to Quistis with a single arched eyebrow. “What the hell was that?”  
  
“She was hitting on you.”  
  
“No she wasn’t.”  
  
Quistis put her hands behind her back the same way the cadet had and walked up to him, batting her eyelashes. “ _Please, I only want to train with_ you _, Mr. Almasy_.”  
  
He blinked. “Okay. It’s different when you do it. But she’s just a cadet angling for extra credit. Which she fucking needs, by the way. Probably knows she doesn’t stand a chance of passing my class if she doesn’t work all the angles.”   
  
“You shouldn’t treat this like a joke. You need to nip it in the bud now before it goes any further.”  
  
Seifer tucked his clipboard under one arm and began gathering up the practice swords his class had left behind. “You, of all people, shouldn’t be lecturing me about this. You weren’t exactly the paragon of maintaining professional student-teacher relationships back in the day.”  
  
Quistis followed him as he started toward one of the lockers to put everything away. “That’s what makes me uniquely suited to lecture you. I’ve been there. And got fired for it, too. You’ve got a lot less latitude to work with now than I had then. Don’t let this girl jeopardize what you’re working for.”  
  
He stacked the practice swords neatly in an open locker and slammed it shut. “It’s not going to. This is nothing. Hyne, Quistis. What the hell do you think I am? I’m not interested in a cadet. No matter how hard she flirts, I’m not going to let her blow me for a good grade.”  
  
“It’s not about whether you’d actually _do_ anything with her.”  
  
“Then what is it about?”  
  
“Appearances.”  
  
“I don’t think it appears like anything to anyone but you.” He brushed past her, grabbed his coat from where he’d flung it over a railing, and pulled it on. Quistis followed hot at his heels.  
  
“Maybe not yet, but it will get worse if you don’t squash it now.”  
  
“Afraid maybe I’ll get my own fan club just like you?” he asked with a smirk.  
  
“You don’t want one. Trust me.”  
  
She could easily imagine a cabal of girls forming in Garden, united around the thrill of getting into bed with the Sorceress’s Knight. He was handsome and infamous and a little bit dangerous. Exactly the sort of thing that would appeal to a certain type.  
  
 _My type, apparently.  
  
_ He paused and turned to face her with a canny look on his face. “Is this more than just a friendly bit of advice?”  
  
Quistis propped her hands on her hips. “I don’t know what you mean.”  
  
He raised both eyebrows and stepped close, his mouth twisted into a wicked grin that made her want to kiss him so hard he wouldn’t be able to look at her with anything ever again except helpless desperation.  
  
“Are you jealous?” he asked quietly.  
  
“What? Why would I be jealous?”  
  
“I don’t know. You tell me.”  
  
She sucked in a breath but had nothing to say.   
  
Good grief, she _was_ jealous. What the hell was wrong with her?   
  
He tilted his head. “Why were you watching my class anyway?”  
  
“I wasn’t. I came in to kill something and stumbled across you.”  
  
“That seems to be happening to you a lot lately.”  
  
Other things were going to happen to her again if she didn’t get herself under better control. Was this the aura spell finally working? It didn’t feel as intense as it had before, but she was definitely thinking all sorts of inappropriate thoughts.  
  
The lock on the huge, Training Center doors buzzed and slid open then, startling her.  
  
“Oh, shit! That’s Xu.” She grabbed Seifer by the lapels of his coat and shoved him toward the nearest tree. “Quick! Hide!”  
  
He frowned but didn’t fight her as she pushed him behind the trunk and up against the rough bark. Quistis threw herself against him and hoped that they were well concealed as the doors swung open and Xu walked in. He still had his clipboard clutched in his right hand, but his left arm looped around her, welcoming her body against his in a way that made her shudder with pleasure -- like sinking into a warm bath.  
  
Quistis tightened her grip on his coat and pressed against him, unable to help herself.  
  
Ah, God. _This_ is what she’d been needing. All of the jittery, nervous anxiety that had been buzzing inside of her since Xu had cast aura on her finally began to abate, the driving desire she could not identify finally somewhat slackened. It made her knees go weak. She slumped in Seifer’s grasp and rested her forehead against his chest, breathing deep the scent of him.  
  
There was no denying it anymore.  
  
She wanted him.   
  
And not in a tender, affectionate way. This was primal. Wild.  
  
She lifted her face and her nose brushed against his collar bone. His throat worked as he swallowed hard.  
  
Xu’s steps strode past them, across the dry dirt near the door, and over to the start of the mud.  
  
Xu paused and grumbled out a curse before starting off into the muck. “Damn it, Quistis. You owe me for this.”  
  
Seifer shifted uneasily. “Why are we hiding from Xu?” he whispered.  
  
“Because if she sees us together, she’ll know that it was you.”  
  
His chest heaved against her with his gasp. “You told her what happened?”  
  
“ _No_. Well...sort of. Not completely. I told her about the aura spell but none of the details.”  
  
“Why is she looking for you?”  
  
“Because we were conducting an experiment to see if it would happen again and she’s checking up on me to make sure I’m not--”  
  
 _Doing exactly I’m doing._   
  
He froze. “You used the aura spell again?”  
  
“Yeah. But it didn’t seem to be working. Until now.” She shivered and moved to nudge the place where his pulse was thundering away just under his jaw, but he jerked away.  
  
Quistis’s back hit the tree as he spun them around.  
  
“That’s what all this is about?” he demanded, his voice low and angry. “You’re high on magic and think that since you already fucked around with me once, there’s no harm in doing it again?”  
  
“What? No.”  
  
“Don’t screw with me like this, Quistis. I’m not fucking heartless, you know.”  
  
“I…” She shook her head. “I’m not trying to. I just...it didn’t work. The aura spell. Not until I saw you.”  
  
He scowled. “Uh huh. Sure. Out of everyone in Garden, I’m the only one who makes you lose control? Did you try tracking down Puberty Boy?”  
  
She wanted to punch him in the face and tackle him to the dirt all at once. “I did, actually.”  
  
“And he said no, huh? Well, I’m not taking second place. I won’t scratch your itch just because Squall wouldn’t.”  
  
“I didn’t want Squall to _scratch my itch_ ,” Quistis growled.  
  
Seifer leaned over her, pressing one hand against the tree above her shoulder. “I’m not doing this with you again. If you want me, that’s fine. Come find me without any magical help pushing you along. Otherwise, forget it.”  
  
He shoved away from her and strode off, his coat swishing behind him.  
  
Quistis stayed leaning against the tree for a moment, her heart racing. Then a terrible ache took over and she slid to the ground. Hot, guilty tears stung at the backs of her eyes.  
  
 _Damn_.


	4. Sweet Treats

Chapter 4: Sweet Treats  
  
Quistis stared down at her dinner, unable to eat. Guilt had settled like lead in her stomach and the sheer weight of it left no room for anything else. She didn’t want food or rest or mindless chatter with her friends. She only wanted to find Seifer and apologize.  
  
After he’d left her behind in the Training Center, he’d vanished — apparently gone off somewhere he knew she wouldn’t find him. With the way she’d hurt his feelings, she supposed she couldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t want to talk to her either if the situation was reversed.  
  
She sighed, the exhalation rife with regret.  
  
The experiment was supposed to tell her how she felt about other men — not drive her straight back to him. As soon as she saw him, she should have heeded Xu’s advice and run in the other direction. But she’d gotten so caught up in the fact that he stirred things in her no one else seemed capable of that she’d immediately lost track of what she was supposed to be doing. Then that cadet had flirted with him, and all ability to be rational had left her completely.  
  
Much as it had gone wrong, the experiment had at least proven one thing.  
  
She wanted Seifer in a way she didn’t want anyone else.  
  
What had happened between them was unique. It would not have happened with someone else.  
  
If only she could find him now to tell him that she was sorry she’d hurt him in trying to figure it out.  
  
She turned in her seat to take one more look around the cafeteria, thinking perhaps he’d taken up residence in a dark corner somewhere, but it seemed he was following her lead from the day before and had taken his dinner to-go. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw Raijin and Fujin, eating alone.  
  
“Who are you looking for?” Rinoa asked.  
  
“Huh?” Quistis spun back around.  
  
Rinoa had paused in her meal and was looking at Quistis curiously. “You’re searching for someone.”  
  
“Oh. Actually…” Quistis decided just to come out with it. Maybe Rinoa knew where she could find him. “I was hoping to catch Seifer. I need to talk to him for a minute.”  
  
Rinoa raised both eyebrows in surprise, but Zell only grunted.  
  
“About his class?” he asked. “He told me you were helping him out.”  
  
“Uh…yeah.” Quistis wondered when Seifer had talked to Zell about her. It had to have been while they’d been waiting for her the day before on their way down to the B-level. No matter. The lie would suit her well. “Have either of you seen him?” she asked.  
  
They both shook their heads.  
  
“What’s going on with his class?” Rinoa asked. “Why does he need your help.”  
  
Zell grunted. “He told me it was administrative stuff. Something about grades.”  
  
“Sort of. There’s a girl in his class who is making herself a problem,” Quistis told them.  
  
Zell barked out a laugh. “Good! Serves him right. About time he got a dose of his own medicine.”  
  
“It’s not exactly a discipline issue. I went to observe his class this morning, just to see for myself, and this girl lingered after he dismissed everyone else and asked him to help her ‘outside of class’ for extra credit.” Quistis made big quote marks with her fingers to emphasize her point.  
  
“So?” Zell said, not getting it.  
  
“So, she’s going to get him fired.”  
  
“How?”  
  
Quistis stared at him in disbelief. How could someone so smart be so dense?  
  
Thankfully, Rinoa grasped the situation perfectly. “She’s hitting on him, Zell.”  
  
“What? No she isn’t! How is asking for extra credit hitting on someone. I used to ask my instructors for extra credit all the time.”  
  
“Yeah. But you meant assignments, not sexual favors,” Rinoa replied.  
  
Zell went bright red. “How do you know that’s what this girl means? This is Seifer we’re talking about, after all. Who would want to flirt with someone like _him_? Even for a good grade…”  
  
Rinoa cleared her throat. “Uh…he _is_ sort of my ex, you know.”  
  
“Oh. Right.” Zell sank down in his chair. “Sorry.”  
  
Rinoa gazed up at the ceiling thoughtfully and twirled her fork between her fingers. “I can see how he might appeal to the right sort of young girl. He’s handsome. Bit of a bad boy. And Garden doesn’t exactly attract the sort of girls who averse to a little danger. But Quisty is right, he shouldn't let it continue. Even if it is innocent.”  
  
Quistis nodded. “He’s on thin ice as it is. He can’t afford to look anything but professional.”  
  
“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if he did get fired,” Zell offered. “I’ve never understood why Squall gave him the position to begin with.”  
  
Rinoa smacked Zell in the arm. “It’s called rehabilitation, dummy. Squall’s helping him turn his life around. Anyway, Seifer’s doing a good job. Squall’s been keeping tabs. He says Seifer’s students are consistently performing either on par with or above those placed with other instructors. And that includes Squall’s own class!”  
  
After watching him work, Quistis had to agree. “I watched him teach for a while. He’s a lot better at it than I ever imagined he’d be.”  
  
Zell held up his hands in surrender. “Okay. Fine. He’s a valuable member of the community and we don’t want to see him fail. I get it. So…what are you going to tell him to do about this girl?”  
  
“Well, make sure he’s never alone with her for one,” Quistis said. “Maybe even file a request to have her moved to another class.”  
  
“Sounds like a good plan to me! Do you want me to bring it up with Squall?” Rinoa asked.  
  
“No. It would just make him mad if Squall knew. I’d rather let him try to handle it himself first.”  
  
“Good point.” Rinoa sat up straight and stretched to search the cafeteria once on her own. “I don’t see him. But Raijin and Fujin probably know where he is. You should go ask them.”  
  
Quistis hesitated. She didn’t know Raijin and Fujin well. She’d never had either of them as students, nor had she known them beyond passing acquaintance when they’d all been cadets together. Approaching them from the other side of the cafeteria might as well have been crossing into a foreign country for how far outside her usual social circles they lived. Still, her guilt propelled her on. If this was the only way she could find him, she had to take it.  
  
“That’s a good idea.” She got up from the table. “See you guys later?”  
  
“Sure! Later!” Rinoa waved.  
  
Quistis left to drop off her tray. Then, unburdened, she scrubbed her palms against her skirt, plastered on her brightest smile, and weaved through the tables to where Raijin and Fujin were sitting.  
  
“Hi!”  
  
They both started and turned to look up at her with utterly perplexed expressions.  
  
“Um…Hi, Instructor Trepe,” Raijin said after a moment.  
  
“HELLO,” echoed Fujin.  
  
Quistis’s mouth had gone dry. She barreled on anyway.  
  
“So, I know this is weird, but…do you guys know where I could find Seifer? I have a…um…form that I need to give him for his class, and he doesn’t have a staff mailbox I can leave it in.”  
  
Good grief, she was doing a lot of lying anymore.  
  
“I think he’s in his room,” Raijin said  
  
“Oh. Great! Though…where exactly is that?”  
  
Raijin exchanged glances with Fujin. “He probably won’t answer the door. He was in a pretty bad mood the last time I saw him, ya know?”  
  
“That’s fine. I’ll just slip it under the door.”  
  
At her insistence, Fujin rattled off a room number. Quistis thanked them in her most professional tone and hoped that they didn’t notice her whole body trembling with anticipation as she walked away. Finally, she knew where to find him. She’d be able to explain herself and put an end to the horrible regret gnawing at her bones.  
  
Now the only question remained _how_ to apologize.  
  
Verbally, in person, would of course be best. However, if he didn’t open the door like Raijin suggested, she wanted to have something on hand to leave for him. But what?  
  
She couldn’t exactly go to the store and buy a “sorry I came onto you while magically high” card.  
  
A letter, perhaps?  
  
Considering the intimate nature of the injury she’d inflicted, words didn’t seem like enough. She needed a gift, too. A peace offering.  
  
As she passed the cafeteria counter on her way out, an idea occurred to her. Since it was the only one she had, she seized on it.  
  
Then, gift acquired, she set off…determined to set things right.

***

Seifer scrubbed his hair with a towel and regarded himself in the mirror. The communal men’s showers were thankfully empty with everyone else at dinner, so he’d stood under the hot spray for a long time, letting the water wash over him. But it hadn’t been enough to rinse away the pains of the day.  
  
Goddamn, he’d been such a fool...thinking even for a second that Quistis had come to see him because she wanted him. In reality, she’d been so desperate to explain away what she’d done with him that she’d tried to magically induce herself into experiencing the same thing with another guy, just to prove how little it meant.  
  
Cursing under his breath at how much it still hurt, he combed his damp hair back with his fingers and tossed his towel into the laundry shoot. Gathering up his stuff, he started back to his room.  
  
Fujin and Raijin were at dinner, so he had the place to himself. They shared a common room and each had a single bedroom branching off. All three bedrooms had windows, but only Seifer’s actually opened -- a perk which he hadn’t known about when he picked it but which Raijin and Fujin would have been kind enough to insist that he take anyway. Tonight, the fresh air called to him. He knelt on his bed, levered the old window open, and propped it with a wooden ruler.  
  
Fresh sea air sighed in through the small opening. He closed his eyes and breathed it in for a second before flopping down on his bed.  
  
Lying on his back with his eyes closed, he basked in the salty ocean breeze and thought of the orphanage. Now that he’d scaled back his use of guardian forces, a lot of memories that had grown fuzzy over the years were gaining clarity again. Particularly those of Matron. But he remembered Quistis, too. Small and blonde and bossy as hell. She’d been a force to be reckoned with even back then.  
  
On the rare occasions they banded together, the two of them together had been unstoppable.  
  
A terror upon all.  
  
He smiled at the memory, even though it pained him.  
  
He’d had a family once. Cobbled together as it might have been, he’d belonged. Been part of the group. The gang. Most of them still clung together: Squall, Quistis, Selphie, Irvine, and Zell -- Cid called them “the children of fate.”  
  
He was the only one from the orphanage not included in that designation.   
  
He was the only one who had been lost.  
  
A knock on his door interrupted his reverie.   
  
He sat up, puzzled.  
  
No one ever knocked on his door.  
  
The knock sounded again, louder this time.   
  
He considered ignoring it. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to chat or entertain visitors. But then it occurred to him that whoever was on the other side probably had the wrong room, and scaring cadets absolutely witless always appealed. Forming his face into the best, hardcore villainous scowl he could manage, he started toward the door as the person knocked yet again -- four impatient raps in quick succession.   
  
With an exaggerated growl, he opened the door and roared, “ _What?!_ ”  
  
Quistis yelped and nearly dropped the white box in her hands.  
  
The villain fell straight off Seifer’s face. “Quistis? What the hell are _you_ doing here?”  
  
Quistis flinched and he cursed himself. He hadn’t intended to say that quite as harshly as it had come out. At the same time, he bit down on the urge to tell her as much. What did it matter whether he’d hurt her feelings? Especially if she’d come here to continue meddling with his heart.   
  
She clutched the white box to her ribs and tried to smile. It came out small and flickering, full of anxiety.  
  
_Good. She_ should _feel uneasy_. He had no desire to help her out, so he crossed his arms, leaned against the doorframe, and waited for her to explain herself.  
  
“I came to talk,” she told him.   
  
“I don’t want to talk. That’s why I’m here alone in my room.”  
  
“I know, but…I really think we need to talk.”  
  
He squinted at her. “How did you find me anyway? I didn’t think you knew where my room was.”  
  
“I didn’t. I had to make some discreet inquiries.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“I asked Fujin and Raijin. I told them that I needed to drop off a form for your class. Apparently that’s the fib we’re telling people about why we’ve been seen together recently.”  
  
He gestured to the box. “If that’s a form, it’s a doozy.”  
  
“It’s not a form.” She shifted from foot to foot. “Can I come in? Just for a second to talk. I know you don’t want to, but there are some things I need to say, and I promise I’ll be brief.”  
  
God dammit. Maybe he was a total sucker, but…  
  
“Fine.” He shifted out of the way and watched as she slipped past him into the room. Her blonde hair bobbed in the little fishtail she wore it in behind her head as she walked.   
  
She paused in the middle of the common room rug and turned to face him.  
  
“This is for you,” she announced, holding out the box.  
  
Seifer’s door slid shut as he stepped toward her and took the proffered gift. “What is it?”  
  
“Cake. Two slices. One that’s chocolate with chocolate frosting and one that’s vanilla. I wasn’t sure what you would prefer, so I got both. I know it’s not much, but I have been feeling so awful about what happened this morning, I had to do something.”  
  
“So…you bought me cake?”  
  
“I remembered how much you loved it the one time Matron made you a birthday cake. You ate it until you were sick.”  
  
With a house full of orphans to compete with, he’d hardly had a choice. He’d needed to down as much of that cake as quickly as possible to ensure that he got his fair share (which, for his own cake, he figured meant almost all of it). But he was astonished that Quistis remembered. Or that she would think of it while looking for a way to apologize.  
  
“I wrote you a letter, too,” she added. “It’s on top.”  
  
Sure enough. Taped to the top of the box was an envelope with his name written across the middle in Quistis’s soft, looping hand.   
  
“I wasn’t sure if you’d answer the door or agree to talk to me,” she told him.  
  
Between the cake and the letter, Seifer found that he didn’t quite know what to do with his face. His composure was failing, but he couldn’t seem to decide whether to laugh or cry. He suspected either one would be an overreaction to what was, to Quistis, probably a small gesture.  
  
Despite his silence, Quistis kept talking.  
  
“You can read it whenever you want. But since saying it out loud is probably better…”  
  
She clasped her hands in front of her and took a deep breath.  
  
“I wasn’t myself this morning. Even so, that’s no excuse. I can see now how astonishingly thoughtless I was toward you. I got so caught up in my own issues, I didn’t even consider what this whole situation might be doing to you. You’re right -- you’re not heartless. I know that. But I haven’t put nearly enough effort into remembering it. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so, so sorry that I did.”  
  
Apology delivered, she unclenched her hands and looked at him expectantly.  
  
He was so gobsmacked, he didn’t know what to say.  
  
She frowned. “Okay. I just wanted you to know. Now that you do…I’ll go.”  
  
She started toward the door.  
  
Seifer side-stepped into her path. “Wait.”  
  
She tilted her face up toward his, her eyes wide with — _ah, hell._ Was that hope? With the way his heart lurched, he had to be the biggest goddamn sucker in existence.  
  
“Do you want to stay and help me eat the cake?” he asked. “There are two slices, after all.”  
  
Quistis glanced over his shoulder at the closed door and he wondered if she’d just realized for the first time that they were alone in his room. Surely it was a place she never thought she’d end up and it must have struck her as strange. When her gaze snapped back to his, however, she didn’t appear uncertain or wary.   
  
She _smiled._ The expression hit him right in the gut.   
  
“Sure.”  
  
Seifer flipped open the box to look at the two slices nestled neatly inside. It was the same cake served every day in the cafeteria. Nothing fancy. Not even anything special. But it seemed pretty magnificent to him as he inhaled the sweet scent of frosting. “Which one do you want?”  
  
“They’re my apology. You should pick.”  
  
“I like both.”  
  
“Equally?”  
  
“Damn near. C’mon. You choose.”  
  
She eyed him. “Will you make fun of me if I pick vanilla?”  
  
“Yes. But only for a second, and I won’t mean any of it.”  
  
She laughed and he’d never heard anything so nice. “A kind offer. But I’ll go with the chocolate.”  
  
He smirked. “Coward. Can’t take a little ribbing to get what you want?”  
  
She blew out a breath. “I’m afraid that’s a skill I’m still working on.”  
  
He took the cake and sat down on the couch with it. Quistis hesitated only a moment before coming over to sit down beside him. The cafeteria lady had included two disposable forks in the box. Seifer handed one to Quistis, then held out the box between them and speared the tip off the vanilla slice. He wasn’t sure why vanilla had become synonymous with bland, because the cake tasted heavenly. Perfectly sweet and warm and light.  
  
Quistis took a bite of the chocolate and sighed with relish as she chewed.  
  
“Is that why you were so desperate to explain away what happened with me the other night” he asked her. “Fear of ridicule?”  
  
Her mouth was full, but she shook her head.  
  
He didn’t believe her.  
  
“I know you didn’t want anyone to find out about it. And that’s fine. I get it. What I don’t understand is how having Xu mess you up again with aura was supposed to make things any better.”  
  
Quistis swallowed hard and brushed the back of her hand across her mouth before replying. “I was…confused. I wanted to know why it happened. What it meant.”  
  
“And you couldn’t figure that out without using the aura spell again?”  
  
“No. Because I needed to know…” She huffed and turned to him, her expression earnest and open. “I needed to know what was magic and what was me. After the aura spell wore off the first time, I thought what I felt for you that night would go along with it. But it didn’t.”  
  
Seifer’s breath caught and held.  
  
He set the cake aside.  
  
“And? Did you get your answer?”  
  
“Part of it. There’s obviously _some_ level of attraction — on my side, at least. I can’t speak to your experience.”  
  
Seifer quirked an eyebrow at her in disbelief. How could a woman with an actual fan club be so unaware of her own appeal?  
  
“My experience is that there’s a _lot_ of attraction. Boatloads of it. Sort of thought I made that pretty damn clear.”  
  
She frowned. “You were under the influence of aura though, just like me. You’re not worried that this is all the effects of magic and nothing more?”  
  
Honestly, the possibility hadn’t even occurred to him.  
  
“I’ve been manipulated by magic before. This is something else.”  
  
The reminder of his shady past did not seem to deter her. She licked her lips and glanced at his mouth, her expression so blatantly hungry that it was all he could do not to lean across the distance between them and take everything she was willing to give.  
  
She wasn’t quite there yet. But she was far closer than he’d have ever guessed.  
  
He cleared his throat. “You know what was wrong with your experiment?”  
  
“Besides everything?” She laughed.  
  
He chuckled, too. “Besides that, yeah. I was just thinking…you needed a control.”  
  
She blinked in surprise. “A control?”  
  
“Yeah. You recreated the magical circumstances, but you didn’t have a non-magical experience to compare your results to.”  
  
Interest flashed in her eyes. “That makes sense. What kind of control do you think I should have done?”  
  
“You should have just tried kissing me. Without any magic.”  
  
“What if it turned out that you were the one who didn’t want it?”  
  
“It wouldn’t have.”  
  
“But the aura spell—”  
  
“Has fuck-all to do with my willingness to kiss you. Or be kissed by you. Pretty sure that predates the whole thing.”  
  
She leaned toward him a fraction but still didn’t take the bait. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings again.”  
  
Right now, the only thing she could do to hurt his feelings would be to refuse to kiss him at all. That, he supposed, would provide a pretty unambitious answer as to whether she’d acted on genuine desire or magical influence — though that was most certainly not the answer he wanted. And, judging from the slight flush to her skin and the darkening of her eyes, he didn’t think it was the conclusion she’d come to anyway.  
  
“ _Quistis_.” He reached out, cupping her face with one hand. “Just try it.”  
  
She groaned softly and turned into him. Her knees pushed against his as she put both hands to his chest.  
  
_Oh, Hyne. She’s really going to do it.  
  
_ Her lips brushed his and Seifer thought he would fall through the floor.  
  
The kiss was light and quick. But then she lingered…  
  
She didn’t push him away. Didn’t run.   
  
Instead she curled her fingers against his chest and let out a breath that feathered out across his mouth, setting the fire within him to roaring.   
  
He burrowed his hand into her hair and hauled her back in for another one. They swayed with the power of it, their lips closed but firm, the kiss growing steadily harder. When Seifer broke it, his head spinning, Quistis wasted no time drawing him back again, and this time there was no pretense about it.  
  
This kiss was no test.  
  
Nor was it tentative.  
  
Quistis leaned against him, knotted her hands in his shirt, and slid her tongue across his bottom lip.  
  
_Fuck.  
  
_ He wanted so badly to gather her up, tip her over backwards on the couch, and show her just how much better it could have been between them the other night. But he held himself back. He would _not_ take this too fast. Not again.  
  
He looped his arm around the small of her back instead and pulled her across the couch, nearly into his lap. She grunted and kissed him even harder, her hands clawing their way up to his shoulders, then into his hair. Perhaps the whip should have been a clue, but he had not imagined her as an aggressive lover. The way she pulled his head down though…the way she teased him with her teeth and climbed closer, her breaths coming sharper, her kisses faster and deeper…  
  
_Sweet Hyne_.  
  
Holding back was the most delicious torment imaginable.  
  
Seifer growled and swept his tongue into her mouth.  
  
She tasted sweet from the cake. Sweet and perfect and like everything he had ever wanted.  
  
This wasn’t magic.  
  
This was _them_ , sparking off each other like flint struck on steel. This was attraction and want and chemistry. Maybe they hadn’t fully realized they had it before. Maybe magic had struck the match, but the tinder was already there and now it was burning. With every muffled sound she made and every bold press of her tongue against his and every tug of her fingers on his hair, the inferno grew.  
  
She broke away, breathless.  
  
“ _Seifer_ …”  
  
His name had never sounded like that on Quistis Trepe’s tongue before. She’d chastised him, yelled in anger and muttered in disappointment. But she’d never spoken of him with passion, his name somewhere between an oath and a prayer. Now that he knew how devastating it sounded, he wanted to hear it over and over again.   
  
He was pulling her back in for another kiss when a sound in the hallway made her jerk back, her eyes going wide with alarm.  
  
_Raijin and Fujin.  
  
_ _Shit.  
  
_ He didn’t care whether his friends saw. They were loyal enough that if Seifer told them not to talk, they would take the secret of what they’d witnessed to their graves. But he doubted Quistis felt the same. He leapt up, hauling Quistis along with him, and flung the cake box unceremoniously into his room.  
  
He took a few steps back from her, opening up space between them, and — right as the door slid open — yelled, “Alright! Fine! I’ll file the damn form!”  
  
Fujin and Raijin both froze in the doorway.  
  
Quistis, too, stared at him. Thankfully, she had her back to the door, because she was entirely to flushed to have spent the last few minutes involved in nothing more than innocent conversation. He hoped he didn’t look as wrecked as she did, though he also found the arousal still burning in her eyes while his friends looked on, none-the-wiser, one of the hottest things he’d ever seen.  
  
She recovered enough to bark back, “Good! Don’t keep putting it off. I want you to do it first thing in the morning. Understood?”  
  
Seifer rolled his eyes for Raijin and Fujin’s sake. “Understood.” And then, to Quistis, he asked, “Are you happy now that you got your answer?”  
  
She blinked as she processed what he meant, then the side of her mouth twitched in a small smile. “Yes.”  
  
“And?”  
  
She breathed out hard, her eyes sparkling. “And I’ll be coming by your class tomorrow to discuss this further.”  
  
“I’ll be waiting.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
They locked gazes for a moment and Seifer almost forgot to care that Raijin and Fujin were standing there watching.  
  
“Good night,” she said, her tone perhaps a touch too gentle, then turned and strode from the room.  
  
Raijin and Fujin both leapt out of her way to let her pass, guilty expressions on their faces. Once Quistis was gone, Raijin turned to Seifer with a wince.  
  
“Sorry, boss. She told us she had a form to give you. Didn’t realize it came with a lecture, ya know?”  
  
“It’s fine,” Seifer replied with a dismissive wave.  
  
“I didn’t even think you’d answer the door,” Raijin admitted.  
  
“UPSET,” Fujin agreed.  
  
“I’m over it.” Seifer started toward his room. He was going to need a few minutes alone. “Tired though. I’m gonna go fill out that form so Instructor Trepe doesn’t take my head off tomorrow.”  
  
He closed the door on their pitying gazes and immediately his face split into a goofy grin.  
  
She wanted him. For real.  
  
And she was going to come see him in the morning, sans any magic but armed with certain desire. Whatever that meant for him, it _had_ to be good. So…so good.  
  
_God_ , he’d never looked forward to going to class more in his life.


	5. Maybe Later

Chapter 5: Maybe Later

Quistis regarded herself critically in the mirror. For the first time in ages, she'd gotten out her makeup. At first, she'd tried too hard — lipstick and eyeliner too obvious a change from barefaced to feel anything but desperate and clownish. So she'd scaled back to just mascara, tinted lip balm, and a subtle eyeshadow.

Not exactly the bombshell look she'd imagined for herself overnight, but in the light of day the idea of strolling into the Training Center dressed to the nines and unmanning Seifer with a single glance seemed a naive and adolescent dream. And anyway, she had class to teach today. She couldn't make herself up too dramatically. Self-consciously, she forked both hands through her hair, smoothing it down over her shoulders, then brushed the black skirt of her uniform down straight against her thighs.

She gave one last twirl around in front of the mirror before pronouncing herself satisfied.

Honestly, she knew that she was overthinking this. Seifer had shown interest in her even when she'd been drenched from head to toe and covered in mud. Agonizing over her appearance now was silly. But she'd spent half the night lying awake in bed, thinking about Seifer's kiss, imagining what scenarios might unfold when she met him today. While a number of her dreams had veered off into realms to graphic to contemplate at eight in the morning, doubt had somehow managed to wedge its way into her mind.

What if he was merely toying with her? Perhaps as some kind of revenge.

His kiss had certainly _seemed_ sincere. She'd been wanting to kiss him anyway, so when he suggested it, she couldn't resist a quick peck just to see what it would be like. The sheer rush of shivery pleasure even that small contact fired through her body had taken her breath away and apparently robbed her of all sense, because she wasn't sure how they ended up thoroughly entangled mere seconds later — Quistis with her hands buried in his hair, his arm around her back, dragging her across the couch into his lap, his tongue brushing hers.

The memory made her bite her lip to hold back a groan.

Quistis sighed and pushed her hair back behind her ears. She needed to get herself under control. They'd been interrupted mid-kiss and hadn't discussed anything. He might not have any interest in continuing on with this — whatever _this_ even meant. A single kiss did not a relationship make. And even if it did…was a relationship really what either of them wanted?

 _Ugh_. There was still a lot to untangle here.

She needed to be patient and not go rushing in.

As she left her room, she checked the time on her watch. His class wouldn't be over for at least another hour yet.

She had some time to waste.

Figuring she might as well get some work done, she went and checked her faculty mail box. It was half stuffed full of fliers and helpful administrative reminders, ostensibly from Squall but actually written by Xu. Quistis shuffled through them, dropped everything she considered frivolous into a recycling bin, and took the rest along with her to her classroom. She set the paperwork on her desk, contemplated getting some grading done, and checked the time again.

Still forty five more minutes.

_Damn it._

She sighed, sat down, and turned on her workstation.

Much as she tried to focus, the words on the screen all blurred together. Her mind wandered. She leaned against the desk and brushed her thumb distractedly across her bottom lip, reminding herself what it had been like the night before when it had been Seifer's tongue there instead.

Eventually, after staring into space for nearly twenty minutes and getting absolutely nothing done, she decided to cut her losses and simply head down the Training Center early. At least then she could watch him work rather than sit around accomplishing none of her own.

Quistis trembled with excitement as she took the elevator back down to the first floor. Knowing that she was heading in his direction made her heart pound wildly in her chest. God, she was looking forward to seeing him. To being touched by him.

She turned toward the Training Center, her steps so light and quick that her feet hardly seemed to touch the floor.

"Yo! Quisty!"

She paused and glanced over her shoulder to see Zell waving at her.

"Hey!" he called out. "I'm glad I caught you! I wanted to let you know that Selphie—"

"Sorry, Zell! I'm in a hurry. Can it wait?"

He frowned. "Uh…I guess. But it's kind of important…"

"Great!" Quistis waved. "Tell me later!"

She didn't wait for him to reply before she started off again. A few seconds later, she pushed open the Training Center's doors and sucked in a deep breath, redolent with damp air and loamy soil. Cadets spilled out across the area just inside, practicing with one another. Quistis searched out their teacher only to suffer an intense shock of disappointment when it didn't turn out to be Seifer. Another instructor stood there — older, red haired and tanned.

It took her a moment to process that this wasn't Seifer's class…that he hadn't been replaced at some point during the night, the memory of his lips and his hands just a vivid dream.

She found him further back, his class pushed underneath the tree canopy where the ground was still tacky. His students were making the best of it, but they were a mess. Quistis noticed with a sick twist of pleasure that the girl who had stayed after to flirt with Seifer last time had been slammed into he mud at some point by her partner. A streak of it ran up one side of her face, into her hair.

Seifer stood atop a flat rock observing them, his face drawn into a scowl.

When he noticed her walking toward him, the hard line of his brow suddenly softened. His mouth even turned up nearly to the edge of smiling before he corrected himself.

Quistis warmed inside and positioned herself off to the side, striking what she hoped looked like an authoritative position so that any onlookers would assume she was observing the class as a whole and not just its instructor.

The wait was interminable.

Finally, at long last, Seifer whistled to get his class's attention.

The muddy, exhausted cadets all turned as one to face him.

"Alright, kids! I'm letting you out a few minutes early today. Go clean up."

With sighs of relief, they trudged off — even Seifer's admirer moved past without saying anything, apparently too bedraggled and tired to bother. He didn't even seem to notice her though. As his class left, he only had eyes for Quistis. He smirked over their heads and shoved both hands into his pockets.

"Fancy meeting you here, Instructor," he said as he strolled up to her.

Quistis's heart skipped a beat. Good lord, he was handsome.

She licked her lips in anticipation. "Good morning."

He looked her up and down with a quick flick of his green eyes. "You look nice today."

"Thanks." Her face warmed. "You do, too."

He chuckled and stomped to knock some of the mud off his boots. "Yeah. Getting dirty in the Training Center really seems to do it for you."

Quistis rolled her eyes at his teasing. "You're not _that_ muddy."

He arched an eyebrow. "Not enough, huh? Noted. Honestly, I was hoping to stay out of this shit completely today, but Mister Ass Face over there pushed us out of our usual spot." He gestured with a sharp jerk of his thumb at the other instructor, still working with his class.

Quistis was surprised he would let something like that pass. "It's not like you to let someone push you around."

He shrugged. "I'm trying not to make waves."

"How very reformed of you."

He flashed her a wicked grin. "I'm saving up all my devious energies for other things at the moment."

_Oh my._

He began picking up the gear his class had left behind. Quistis leapt to help him, thinking that if she were engaged in Garden business her presence would look less suspect.

"So…" she said softly as they started toward the lockers to put everything away, "about last night…"

"You sure are having to say that to me a lot lately. Aren't you?"

She blushed.

He noticed with a smirk and the obvious pleasure her embarrassment gave him made her cheeks flare even hotter.

"For what it's worth, I hope you keep having to say it," he told her in a low rumble. "I like it. A lot."

"I…I like it, too," Quistis admitted.

He put everything he had into one of the lockers, then relieved Quistis of what she had in her arms and put it in, too.

"So," he drawled, slamming the door, "is that the answer you got from our little experiment? That it's not just the aura spell?"

Quistis sucked in a breath. "It's definitely more than just magic."

He grunted in satisfaction and shifted a little closer to her. "I thought as much."

His proximity was making it hard to think. Quistis pressed back against the lockers. "So…what does that mean?"

He tilted his head. "It means whatever you want it to mean."

"You don't have any expectations?"

"Of you? No. I have hopes. And things I want. Like…I _hope_ that class over there ends soon and clears the fuck out because I _want_ to kiss you so bad I can practically taste it. And Hyne…when you bite your lip like that, it makes me wish it was my teeth instead. Makes me want to lick it and suck it and listen to the little noises you make…"

Quistis couldn't breathe. She'd gone dizzy with longing.

Seifer too had to pause to take a long, tremulous breath.

"But I don't _expect_ any of that," he continued, more evenly this time. "If this is too much for you, if you have these feelings but don't want to act on them…" He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, as if to say it would be no big deal to him, though the intensity of his gaze suggested he was not nearly as neutral on the situation as he wanted her to think.

The thought had definitely occurred to her. She knew quite well that just because she desired him didn't mean she had to do anything about it. She'd longed for plenty of men from afar and her feelings had always fizzled out after a while.

But this was different.

She'd already acted on her feelings with him. Multiple times. And her desire wasn't one-sided. He wanted this, too.

It made the pull between them much fiercer than anything she'd known before. They'd already engaged in one kind of intimacy. Why deny themselves more?

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to act on my feelings," she told him.

Heat flared in his eyes. He grabbed hold of her hand and squeezed.

His gloves were butter soft from use and she swore she could feel the heat of his skin coming through, but it might've been her imagination. Tangling her fingers with his, she looked at the practicing class to make sure no one was watching.

He glanced at their audience too and grumbled out a curse. "Fucking hell. Are they _ever_ going to wrap it up?"

Quistis wondered whether they could slip away into the trees without anyone noticing. "I can't stay much longer. I've got my own class to teach."

He muttered in frustration. "How much longer can you stay?"

She checked her watch and winced. "Maybe five minutes?"

He looked to the trees with a calculating expression on his face for a second before giving way to resignation. "It's still muddy as fuck back there. You can't go to class with dirt smeared up to your knees."

Quistis lifted an eyebrow. "Why are my _knees_ getting dirty in this scenario?"

He sent her a wickedly mischievous grin and then dropped her hand. "I'd like to say that it's for the reason you're thinking, but really it's just _that_ soupy. C'mon. I'll walk you out."

They skirted around the other class, keeping their distance from one another as they walked even though Quistis kept gravitating back toward his side. When they emerged out into the hallway and the doors closed behind them, they found themselves suddenly — briefly — alone.

Quistis grabbed Seifer's arm. "Quick. Before someone—"

"Hey, Quistis!"

_Oh, for the love of—_

Irvine appeared at the other end of the hallway, the door swishing shut behind him. "Zell told me I might find you here. We wanted to let you know that Selphie—"

"Whatever it is can wait," Seifer snapped.

Irvine crossed his arms. "Uh. It kind of can't, actually."

"You're interrupting!"

Irvine's eyes went wide. "Interrupting what?"

"I'm helping Seifer with his class," Quistis said quickly.

She didn't want anyone to know about this yet. Not because she was ashamed, but because this was new and fragile and _private_. Plus, she didn't even know what it was yet. Much as she liked Irvine, what happened between her and Seifer was none of his business.

"Oh! Right. I heard about that. The 'extra credit' girl," Irvine said.

Seifer scowled. "Extra credit girl?"

"Yeah. Rinoa told me that there's a cadet in your class who's been hitting on you."

Seifer glanced at Quistis who shrugged helplessly.

"I heard Quistis was gonna tell you to move her to another class."

Seifer sighed. "She's fine where she's at."

"Right up until she kills your career," Quistis mumbled.

He bristled. "What'll kill my career is offloading one of my failing students onto another instructor."

Irvine made a noise of agreement. "He's got a point. Anyway, I've got some ideas of my own if you want to hear them. I'm pretty experienced in this kind of thing, you know."

Seifer groaned in disgust. "Thanks but no thanks. I'm dealing with it."

What a way to kill the mood. Quistis checked her watch. "I've really got to go or I'm going to be late for my class."

"Right!" Irvine snapped his fingers. "The reason I was looking for in the first place is to tell you that Selphie—"

"No time!" She waved him off. "You'll have to try and catch me later."

She said the last bit loudly, hoping Seifer would take it as the hint she meant it to be. With Irvine watching and time ticking, she couldn't wait around to make sure he understood. She turned her back on both of them and rushed away.

She barely made it to her desk before her students started filing in.

Her mood made for a difficult class. The level of focus involved allowed her to make it through her lecture, but once the class sat down for a quiz and the room went quiet, Quistis was left to her dangerously vivid and sexually frustrated thoughts. Unfulfilled desire smoldered in her chest, sparkling tendrils reaching out to her lips and her hands, and hotter ones twining down deep into her core.

She wriggled distractedly against her chair as her students worked and tried again to get some of her work done. It was just as hopeless a task as before. She breathed a huge sigh of relief when her class period finally came to a close.

"Time's up. Please submit your quizzes, even if they're incomplete," she told her students. A couple of them groaned as they hit the proper buttons on their terminals. "That's all for today. Remember to review stat junctions for Wednesday!"

The door slid open as her students filed out.

Quistis had to stifle her own groan of frustration when one of the girls in her class lingered behind, a fretful look on her face.

"Excuse me, Instructor?"

"Yes?" Quistis asked, impatience making her sound more clipped than she intended.

"I wanted to talk to you about the grade I got on my last paper…."

Cursing inwardly, Quistis tried tried everything she could to hide the fact that she was screaming inside as she explained the girl's grade and pointed out all of the areas where she had lost points. This girl was genuinely eager to do well. She just needed more guidance and support. Quistis reminded herself that this was her job, and that it was hardly this girl's fault that she was eager to be finished for the day so she could find one of the other teachers and pin him to a wall somewhere.

Even so, holding on to her patience proved a serious struggle. By the time the girl was satisfied, more than ten minutes had passed.

Walking out along with her student, Quistis searched the hallway for any sign of Seifer.

Had he gotten the message? Would be here, waiting for her?

She didn't see him and her heart began to flag…until she spotted him near the elevator, leaning with his back against the wall.

Her heart soared.

He'd changed his clothes, exchanging his muddy boots and pants for clean ones, but he still had on the same vest and coat. His hair looked slightly damp and she wondered if he'd showered. He'd been just out of the showers last night when she'd gone to his room and he had smelled freaking amazing — warm and fresh and clean.

Quistis started toward him, trying and failing to moderate her pace. When he saw her coming, he reached out and pushed the down button, then rocked on his feet with his back turned to her, as if waiting impatiently for the elevator car to arrive rather than for her lips on his.

She arrived beside him right as the elevator arrived and the doors whooshed open.

Thank the heavens, it was empty.

Seifer stepped inside.

Heart pounding in her ears, Quistis followed.

They waited in tortured silence as the doors slowly started to slide shut.

Any moment now, and they would have a few moments of privacy. He would sweep her into his arms and…

"Hey! Wait!"

A hand shot through the gap, making the door pause and reverse direction.

Quistis thought she might explode.

The door opened back up to reveal Selphie. Behind her, Rinoa was jogging to catch up, waving her arms and pantomiming for them to run. Fear prickled up Quistis's spine. But she was trapped. There was nowhere to go.

Selphie leapt into the elevator. "Quistis! Oh man! I'm so glad I caught you!"

The elevator doors closed behind her, trapping them in together.

Selphie had a clipboard in one hand and a brightly colored gel pen with a giant plastic flower on top in the other.

 _Oh no_.

"Guess what time it is?!" Selphie popped up onto her toes.

"Um…what?" Quistis asked, terrified of the answer.

"It's Garden Festival time!"

Both Quistis and Seifer groaned in unison. Selphie had mercifully forgotten about the Garden Festival now for two years running. Squall had threatened to personally execute anyone who even mentioned it to her.

"I realized the other day that we haven't had an event here since the night we all got back to Garden after time compression. And since we're all stuck here with nothing to do while we travel…" She swiveled back and forth on her toes. "What better time to revive the festival?!"

Quistis eyed the elevator's progress. If they could just get out before…

"Anyway! You want to sign up to help?" Selphie shoved the clipboard in Quistis's direction.

 _Fuck_.

There was no getting out of it now. If she said no, Selphie would keep bringing it up. She was an absolutely relentless recruiter, able to wear down any foe to nothing without so much as breaking a sweat.

Quistis sighed with resignation and took the pen to scrawl down her name. Better to simply accept her fate. "Sure."

"Booyaka! Thanks! We're gonna to have so much fun, I swear! It's gonna be a blast!" She pumped a fist in the air and turned to Seifer, ready to take another victim. She must not have noticed exactly who all she'd gotten in the elevator with, however, because as soon as she processed who she was standing beside, she went perfectly still.

For a moment, she merely looked at him, not sure what to do.

The elevator stopped, dinged to let them know they were at the ground floor.

Selphie swallowed hard and shoved her clipboard at Seifer. "You want to help, too?"

He regarded her with an inscrutable expression.

Nobody loathed Seifer more than Selphie. In all of Garden, she had the furthest to go toward forgiving him. Galbadia had bombed Trabia Garden under his command, and that was an injury that simply went too deep. But apparently there was no line which she would not cross for the Garden Festival.

Seifer glanced at Quistis, then shrugged. "Sure. I'll help."

"Uh…you will?" Selphie squeaked.

"Yeah." He grabbed the pen from her and put down his name right under Qusitis's as the elevator doors slid open.

They all walked out, Selphie doing so in a stunned silence. Quistis hoped her shock would last long enough for the both of them to make their escape, but they had no such luck. Selphie gave sharp shake of her head and snapped back into herself.

"Are you busy right now?" she asked, looking at Quistis. "There's so much to do…we've really got to get started if we want to get this done in time!"

She shuffled Quistis along to the quad, mostly ignoring Seifer, though he followed anyway. The quad was open to the air, flooded with bright sunlight and a fresh sea breeze. Most days, people came to lie across the benches and the fountains, enjoying the weather. But today the quad bustled with activity. Half a dozen people had already begun reconstructing the old stage. Among them Quistis spotted Zell and Irvine.

"I guess you can help them build," Selphie said to Seifer with an awkward and dismissive wave. To Quistis, she said more enthusiastically, "You can help find and make decorations!"

Selphie dragged her past the stage, toward where another group of people were laboring.

Knowing that she was doomed anyway, Quistis decided to go full nuclear. "Have you discussed this with Squall?"

"No. Why? Do you think he'll have a problem with it?"

 _Yes_. And maybe Squall would have the cold heart and the authority necessary to shut the whole thing down.

"You should ask him. Just to make sure," Quistis suggested.

"Hmm." Selphie narrowed her eyes, obviously sensing something amiss, but she evidently couldn't find any reason to object. "I'm sure it'll be fine. I'll show him my plans, and look how many people I've got working on it! We've got such a good team, he'll _have_ to agree! I'll go ask him right now! Why don't you get started here? We really need some paint if you can find some in the maintenance closets!"

Selphie left Quistis at table full of streamers, unfilled balloons, and poster board, then jogged off.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief once she was gone.

"I tried to warn you!" Zell called out to Quistis from atop the stage.

"Me, too!" added Irvine. "Told you it was important and couldn't wait!"

Quistis grumbled and waved her acknowledgment. Maybe she _should_ have paused for a minute to listen to them, but she'd been in too much of a rush to get to Seifer and it hadn't even netted her any of the sort of time she wanted! Now she would be stuck here in her every otherwise unoccupied moment, doing crafts and withering under Selphie's ruthless command.

Last time, she'd even somehow talked Quistis into playing tambourine along with Irvine and Zell as they performed a song. With no musical aptitude to speak of, tambourine had been all they could trust her with. Somehow the more sensible idea of her _not participating at all_ had never come up. Who knew what nonsense Selphie would have in mind for this go-round.

Quistis walked over to one of the maintenance closets and pulled the door open.

 _Paint. Hmm_ …

Surely there had to be some in here somewhere.

A strong, unexpected shove propelled her inside. The door shut behind her, locking her in the dark, and a strong arm slipped around her waist.

" _Finally,_ " Seifer growled in her ear.

She spun around and somehow in the darkness they found each other instantly, his mouth landing hard on hers. Her hands climbed wildly up his back, reaching and grasping at anything she could find — the thick material of his coat, his collar, his hair. The tension that had been coiling up inside her all morning , building in intensity, sprang free.

They devoured each other.

His lips took utter possession of her, overwhelming her every nerve ending with unbearable pleasure and even more intense relief. They broke apart, gasped for breath as one, and then dove back in for more. His hands settled on her back and waist, clutching her tight against the broad expanse of his chest. Ah, she loved the shape of him. His easy strength and confident masculinity.

He left off her lips to trail open-mouthed kisses along the line of her jaw before dropping his attention to her neck. Quistis tilted her head back and gasped as his tongue and teeth played across the frantic pounding of her pulse.

"Holy Hyne, I thought I was gonna lose my goddamn mind if I didn't get to kiss you soon," he ground out, his arms tightening even harder around her.

"Me too. I couldn't even focus in class…"

He chuckled and lifted his head to kiss her long and deep again. "Guess the shoe's finally on the other foot then."

Quistis had gone dizzy with desire, so it took a moment to process what he'd said. When it clicked, she pulled back.

"You used to think about me during class?" she asked, surprised.

"Sometimes."

"I…I never knew. Never even suspected…"

His shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. "There didn't seem any point in letting you know. I was your student, and you pretty clearly weren't interested anymore."

Quistis's eyebrows shot up. "Anymore?"

"Uh. Yeah…" He shifted uneasily. "I always sort of thought you might've been interested in me back when we were both cadets."

Despite the years that had passed and the fact that she was currently making out with him in a maintenance closet, the thought that he'd been aware of her girlhood crush made Quistis burn with embarrassment. She racked her mind for anything she could have done to give herself away. She'd been so careful! But tact about such things had not really been her strong suit as a girl.

"How…" She swallowed hard, not sure she even wanted to know, lest her tell her some humiliating thing she would have to live with for the rest of her life. "How did you know?"

He let out an amused grunt and bent down to worry at her ear with his lips and teeth. "So…you _did_ like me?" he rumbled.

Quistis whimpered when he did something with his tongue that should not have felt as good as it did.

"Yes," she said with some effort. "But I didn't think you'd noticed. You never paid any attention to me."

"You were constantly breaking up fights between me and Squall. Made you pretty hard to ignore. And when we both stopped being kids…you definitely got my attention. Along with everyone else in Garden. You were just totally blind to it."

Had she been? She didn't remember anyone ever expressing any interest in her before she'd become a SeeD. After that, her fame as a child prodigy and the authority of her position, combined with her weapon choice, had immediately fetishized her whole being in a way that she still felt profoundly ambivalent about.

Had Seifer really noticed her before all that? She'd always thought of her desirability as driven by the things that had happened to her rather than her own intrinsic worth. But…maybe not. At least, not with him.

"If you knew that I liked you, and you liked me…then why didn't you ever do anything about it?"

"Because I was fifteen." He trailed one hand down to the curve of her bottom and gripped it firmly. "I'm not fifteen anymore."

Thank goodness for that.

He found her mouth again and with some of their urgency alleviated, their kisses became slower…more deliberate and less desperate. Quistis cupped his face with both hands and set about a thorough exploration of his mouth, every long, lush stroke of her tongue and every turn of her head to find new angles drawing new sounds out of him to delight her.

He groaned and pushed her hair back away from her face.

"Why do we always seem to end up in dark closets? I want to _see_ you."

"Maybe later," Quistis whispered.

He shivered. "How much later?"

Before she could answer, a pair of voices approached outside and the door handle jiggled. Quistis froze, panic firing through her, but thankfully Seifer had locked the door. He didn't let her go, but he tilted his head to listen in as the person tried the handle again, more roughly this time.

"It's locked. Do you have a key?" came a voice — a girl.

"No. I think Selphie has all the keys," a male voice replied.

"I thought she said she unlocked everything."

"Well, obviously she didn't. And she's not here. So let's thank our lucky stars and take a freaking break."

"Good idea."

Their footsteps receded and Quistis relaxed back into Seifer's embrace.

"She'll be back soon with the keys, you know," she told him. "Squall won't delay her long."

He cursed softly and kissed her again, his gloved hands twining in her hair. When he pulled away, Quistis's knees were barely holding her up anymore.

"Later?" he asked.

"Yes. I don't care how or where. But…later."

He made a pleased noise. "We'll figure it out."

She didn't want to let go or walk back out into the light of day, not when the alternative was to stay in the dark, wrapped up in Seifer's arms. But they were running out of time, and of all the people in the world who could catch them together, she didn't want it to be Selphie.

"I'll go first," he offered.

Quistis had to force herself to let go. He leaned in and planted one last quick kiss on her lips before he turned and left, gone as quickly as he had appeared. In the dark, Quistis counted out time and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, left tender by all of the exquisite attention he'd paid to it. She closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath.

She reached out and put a hand to the wall to hold herself up.

This feeling inside — bright and sparkling and beautifully intense, like the burning of a star — was new to her. Like nothing she'd ever felt before. She didn't know how to classify it. But she wanted more…so much more she feared she might immolate herself in its flames.

Good god. She was already in way too deep.

And this was only the beginning — the start of something so powerful that it would either be transcendent or cataclysmic.

 _With Seifer, it's usually a bit of both_.

_Maybe that's what makes this so exciting._

She breathed deep for a moment, willing her heart to slow. And then, straightening her uniform, she reached for the door handle and stepped back out into the light.


	6. The Art of Seduction

Chapter 6: The Art of Seduction  
  
Seifer had done a lot of dumb things in fits of passion during the course of his life — things he was still suffering the consequences of — and apparently he hadn’t learned a damn thing. Nobody on the Garden Festival Committee wanted to be there, but they all wanted _him_ there even less. The kisses he had been able to steal from Quistis in the maintenance closet made enduring the messenger girl’s tyranny and the others’ disdain worth it, but only just.  
  
Despite his best efforts, he did not catch her alone again. Not even once Selphie let them quit for the day. Quistis’s friends quickly gathered round her and swept her off. Seifer hadn’t been invited, so he grabbed something to eat at the cafeteria and went back to his room to work on writing out his student assessments.  
  
“You sure you don’t want to go with us?” Raijin asked as he walked through the common room with Fujin, heading toward the door.  
  
Seifer sighed. “You invite me every week. And every week I say no.”  
  
Raijin and Fujin had both joined a small Pupurun club _thing_. Seifer didn’t quite understand what they did there, to be honest. Some sort of role playing game that sounded complicated and silly. Their group had started out playing casually and now things were beginning to get more intense. They were meeting more often, for longer periods of time.  
  
“It’s a lot of fun. I think you’d enjoy it, ya know?”  
  
“I don’t want to be the only one there with no goddamn idea what’s going on.”  
  
“Fu and I will help you. It’s not a big deal. Everyone’s real nice. And anyway, you could stand to get out more, ya know?”  
  
Seifer crossed his arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Just that you spend a lot of time alone.”  
  
Seifer scowled. “I like being alone.”  
  
Having lived most of his life in the Garden dormitories with shared bathrooms, he knew well the value of a few moments of peace and privacy. And it wasn’t like he just stayed in his room moping. Most mornings, he went out for an early run before hitting the showers and teaching his class. And late in the evenings, he almost always slashed his way through the Training Center. He stayed busy enough without joining some kind of club where he’d have to pretend to be a magical sprite.  
  
It was bad enough he was already part of that damn festival committee.  
  
“You could come along and just watch,” Raijin suggested. “We meet in the library. You could bring your laptop along and do your work there. Just…ya know…see what the group’s like.”  
  
“FUN!” Fujin agreed.  
  
Seifer groaned. He was already tired. No one on the festival committee had wanted to work with him, so he’d been assigned all the heavy lifting. His arms and back and hands all ached. All he wanted was to spend his evening slumped on the couch, fantasizing about the girl he’d kissed. Was that so much to ask?  
  
“COME!” Fujin insisted, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him up off the couch.  
  
“Fine. But I’m not playing.” Seifer grabbed his laptop. “I’ve got work to do anyway. If it’ll make you guys shut up about this stupid club for a while, I’ll go.”  
  
“GOOD!” Fujin smiled and shoved him toward the door.  
  
When they got to the library, Raijin and Fujin led Seifer back to one of the study rooms where their Pupurun club sat waiting. Seifer hadn’t put much thought into who would be there. He didn’t know enough about it to even conjure a mental image of what one of these game nights might look like. But for some reason, it didn’t surprise him at all to see Zell sitting at the head of the table with a huge array of stuff laid out before him — papers, notes, booklets, and a box of little figurines. A girl with her dark hair pulled into pigtails sat beside him, and Nida rounded out the group.  
  
“This is who you thought I could be friends with?” Seifer growled through his teeth to Raijin.  
  
“I swear, they’re great. Just give ‘em a chance, ya know?”  
  
Raijin and Fujin took their seats, then pulled another out for Seifer who hesitated before sitting down.  
  
“You’re going to play with us tonight?” Nida asked, clearly surprised.  
  
“Nah. I’m just along for the ride. I’ll watch for a bit.”  
  
“Are you sure?” asked the pigtail girl. “It’s no problem if you want to join! We can get a character made up for you real quick, and Zell’s an _awesome_ Magic Minder!”  
  
Seifer arched an eyebrow. “Magic Minder?”  
  
“I run the whole game,” Zell replied with a real hint of pride.  
  
Seifer had even less interest now that he knew Zell would be running the show. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m not playing.”  
  
Zell shrugged. “Suit yourself. Okay…where were we?” He checked his notes. “Ah! Right! So...we had just fought out way to the center of the Shimmering Ruins! Up ahead, at the end of a dark corridor, a light shines…”  
  
“Oooh! Let’s investigate!” the pigtail girl said with an excited clap of her hands.  
  
Zell went on, describing their path down the hallway, the “sprightly artifacts” they found there from heroes gone before them. And then, his eyes wide with emphasis, he described the group emerging from the hallway into a wide, crumbling amphitheater…  
  
“In the middle of which floats the great benevodon, Light Gazer!”  
  
“ATTACK!” Fujin announced, slamming her hand down on the table.  
  
Everyone winced.  
  
Raijin leaned close to her. “Uh…Fu…are you sure you want to—?”  
  
“ATTACK!” she repeated.  
  
Everyone sighed and Zell instructed Fujin to roll her dice.  
  
Seifer cast Raijin a curious glance.  
  
“Her character keeps dying,” he explained in a whisper. “We’ve tried to keep her from just attacking everything we come across, but—OW!”  
  
Fujin had kicked him underneath the table, and apparently the dice roll must have gone in her favor because she pointed triumphantly at it and announced, “CAST GLITTER DUST!”  
  
 _Glitter dust?_ Good lord. It was bad enough that they were pretending to be sprites.  
  
Seifer pushed away from the table. “This looks fun and all, but I’m going to go sit out there where it’s quieter and try to get some of my work done.”  
  
No one took much mind when he left, the battle against Gazer-Whatever-It’s-Name-Was now in full swing. Outside, in amongst the library stacks, Seifer found a free carrel near the back of the library and sat down, flipping his laptop back open.  
  
He’d managed to get two more assessments written when a glimpse of blonde coming in through the library door caught his attention. Quistis had changed out of her uniform into a lacy button up shit and tight black pants. She still had her hair down and looked extra lovely in that same subtle way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Her lips were a little extra pink maybe, her skin smoother and glowing with more warmth than usual.  
  
She had a huge stack of books in her arms. Big, thick ones with drab, brown covers and gilded lettering on the sides. Definitely not light reading. Probably a mix of magic theory and high brow literature, though the book at the very bottom of her stack, which she concealed with another one when she shoved it into the book return, had a brightly colored pastel spine and looked pulpy enough to be interesting.  
  
She didn’t immediately notice him as she set about browsing for something new and he enjoyed the chance to watch her unobserved over the top of his carrel’s privacy panel.  
  
Where would she go first, he wondered?  
  
Poetry? Literature? Philosophy?  
  
She bypassed all of those and, to his great surprise, walked over to the young adult section where she quickly up one of the books displayed prominently on the shelf and then fled to the much more respectable section on battle tactics — which just so happened to be right near where he was sitting.  
  
He leaned over, cupped his hand around his mouth, and whispered at her, “Psst! I saw that!”  
  
She jumped and spun around, clutching the big, flashy novel to her chest.  
  
“Seifer! Good grief. You startled me.”  
  
He grinned and gestured at her book. “What’cha got there?”  
  
“Nothing. Just…a novel.”  
  
“Why are you embarrassed about it?”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
He arched an eyebrow. “You’re covering every inch you can of it with your hands. Why? You don’t want people to know that you ever have fun? It’s a book for teenage girls. Not a porno.”  
  
She blew a bit of hair out of her face with a sigh and came around to sit down in the empty carrel next to his. “I’m a grown up child prodigy. I’m not supposed to be interested in things like pulpy fiction. Especially fiction marketed to children.” She laid the book down on her desktop and he leaned over to catch a glimpse of the cover. It had a stylized picture of a girl on the front with blue flames roaring behind her, her hair whipping in the updraft. Seifer didn’t know what the story was but he’d seen plenty of cadets in his class carrying copies of it around.  
  
“That’s book four in the series. You’ve read a lot of these.”  
  
She shrugged. “It’s fun. It’s light. And…” Her shoulders sagged and she looked down at her hands. “In all these books, these girls have their lives interrupted. They never get to experience their teenage years like a normal kid would.”  
  
“You identify with them,” Seifer said.  
  
“I guess. More than I identify with the main characters of all those dry literary novels about middle aged men cheating on their wives or women in their mid-life crisis sleeping and eating their way across Galbadia, looking for meaning.”  
  
“Personally," Seifer said, "I never saw the point of a story that didn’t include at least one fight with a dragon. You shouldn’t give a damn about other people knowing what you read. I mean…who cares whether you like the sort of stuff anyone thinks you should? Fuck ‘em. They all get to enjoy the juicy, fun stories. But just because you’re smart you have to sit around drinking tea and reading philosophy? That’s bullshit.”  
  
Quistis smiled a little. “You’re right. I shouldn’t care.”  
  
“I guarantee, nobody will say anything. They don’t care. Hell…Zell, Raijin, Fujin, Nida, and some other girl are in one of the study rooms over there right now pretending to be sprites, and nobody’s even noticed _that_.”  
  
“They’re…what?”  
  
“It’s some game they play.”  
  
“Oh.” She eyed him for a moment. “What are _you_ doing here?”  
  
He shifted his laptop back so she could see it past the partition between their carrels. “Working.”  
  
She leaned over to look at his screen. “Yeah? What on?”  
  
“Student assessments.”  
  
She winced. “Shoot. I should probably be working on those, too. I meant to have them finished by now, but I’ve been distracted the past few days…”  
  
Seifer grinned. “Oh? By what?”  
  
She leveled him with a look. “I think you know what.”  
  
He could not have been more pleased.  
  
“Maybe. But it’s still nice to hear.”  
  
She shook her head and flipped open her book so that she would look occupied. “I’m not going to talk dirty for you in the library.”  
  
“C’mon. Don’t be shy. I’ll start—”  
  
She kicked him underneath their desks.  
  
Seifer smirked and shifted out of her range. “I was just kidding.”  
  
“Were you also kidding about _later_?” Quistis whispered.  
  
“Oh. Hungry for more, are we?”  
  
“Just wanting to know what to expect. How wary I should be of passing maintenance closets…that sort of thing.”  
  
“Ah. Well. Always a good idea to be on guard. If Selphie would’ve lightened up with the damn Garden Festival shit for half a second, I would have already captured you for three or four more _laters_. But she never gave me the chance.”  
  
Quistis laughed softly into her hand. “I’m sure if she knew she was cock blocking you, she would be even worse.”  
  
Seifer let out an exaggerated gasp. “I can’t believe you just used the word ‘cock’ in the _library_ , of all places. Sweet Hyne, Quistis. This is a sacred place of learning—”  
  
She slipped down far enough in her chair that she managed to kick him again, but through the fall of blonde hair spilling over her ear, half-concealing her face, he spotted a smile and an adorable flush to her cheeks.  
  
“Be serious,” she chided him.  
  
“I am.”  
  
“No you’re not. You’re teasing me.”  
  
“Teasing is just another form of foreplay.”  
  
“I would prefer _actual_ foreplay.”  
  
She leaned forward in her carrel, hiding her face completely and Seifer nearly lost himself in the sweet rush of lust that washed over him at her words.  
  
God, he would prefer that, too. But the way he was feeling today, he didn’t think there would be much in the way of foreplay. Some time alone with her, a little privacy, and they would be right back where they’d been that night in the Training Center — on the floor, still half-dressed, going at one another with an urgency that would do nothing to rescue his already bruised self-respect.  
  
If anything was going to happen between them, he was determined not to let it happen like _that_ again. His brief, embarrassing performance had left him with a lot to prove.  
  
He eyed Quistis who was still hunched over her book, hiding her face.  
  
 _Hmm…foreplay.  
  
_ If that’s what she wanted, he would find a way to deliver — if not just to prove that he could. But that meant engaging in something he had almost no experience in at all.  
  
Seduction.  
  
He had no idea where to begin. All of his relationships (if they could even be called that) had been little more than brief flashes. His flirtation with Rinoa had probably been the longest lasting, but also the most chaste. He’d always just taken what he wanted from women and moved on. And they’d done the same with him. By his usual timeline, this thing with Quistis should have ended two days ago.  
  
So…where to start?  
  
They’d already kissed. So he supposed he could check that of the list…  
  
 _A list!  
  
_ _Yes!_ He should definitely make a list. Something he could stick to lest he lose track of the mission and take her up against a tree in the Training Center or something. Strategic planning wasn’t exactly his style. But he was basically a fully trained SeeD and a Garden combat instructor. Surely he could figure this out.  
  
Pursing his lips in thought, Seifer opened an empty document on his computer and typed at the top: _Seducing Quistis Trepe_.  
  
Considering she was currently sitting right beside him, the obvious place to start seemed to be…  
  
 _Item 1: Kiss her in the library  
  
_ He tapped his fingers on the desktop. Kissing didn’t seem enough at this point. Maybe he should take it further?  
  
In parentheses he added: _(Or whatever else you can get away with!)  
  
_ Perfect! Not too detailed, but then again…good plans had to be flexible. Time now to put it into motion. He’d add more to it later.  
  
With a sly grin, he shifted his chair over toward Quistis’s.  
  
She straightened and glanced over at him. “What’re you doing?”  
  
“ _Foreplay_ ,” he whispered and slipped his hand over onto her thigh.  
  
Her leg tensed and she let out a yelp loud enough to draw unwanted attention.  
  
“Shh.” He squeezed her thigh and took delight in the way she leaned against the desk, putting one hand over her mouth.  
  
Like all SeeD, Quistis was strong and physically fit. Her thigh felt warm and firm underneath his palm, her musculature deliciously trim and smooth in comparison to his own. Slowly, he slid his hand down toward her knee and then back up, exploring its inner curve. When he got too high, she made a muffled noise and slapped her free hand down on top of his, halting his progress. He half expected her to swat him away but she didn’t. She rocked forward on her chair and pressed down hard, pinning his splayed out hand across her thigh and holding it there. Her fingers slipped between his and curled with tension.  
  
“Show me what you want,” he whispered.  
  
Quistis trembled. “We’re in the library…”  
  
He chuckled. “So? Nobody’s paying any attention to us. Show me…” He wiggled his fingers.  
  
Quistis gave him an agonized look.  
  
“I…I can’t.”  
  
“You could always _tell_ me instead.”  
  
Her thigh went rock hard with tension. “Oh God, no. That would be even worse…”  
  
“Well, if you just want to sit here holding hands, that works for me—” he started to say when Quistis, apparently seized by a burst of courage, suddenly dragged his hand upward and pressed it between her legs. The little, choked noise she made and the way she cupped his palm over the heat of her core made Seifer see stars.  
  
 _Holy fucking mother-loving hell_.  
  
“This is what you want?” he asked roughly.  
  
She nodded and pushed his hand so hard between her thighs that his wrist hurt. He didn’t mind though. He welcomed the pain. Loved it. The sharp, knife-blade intensity of the pain a physical manifestation of how badly she wanted him. God. It was delicious.  
  
He moved what fingers he could and she hissed with pleasure.  
  
Had she always been this sexual and bold, he wondered? He found it hard to believe that she’d lived this long with such a roaring passion underneath her buttoned up exterior. Part of him wanted to believe that it had something to do with him. That maybe only _he_ brought out this side of her. But even he was not such a romantic soul as to truly believe it. More likely, it had simply been a long time since she’d been touched by a man — he couldn’t remember her ever being romantically attached to anyone.  
  
Though, that didn’t mean she hadn’t been with someone.  
  
After all, no one would likely ever find out about _this_ affair either.  
  
He pushed thoughts of what her sexual life might have looked like before him from his mind. He didn’t want to be thinking of that now. Right now, he was the one sitting there with her, drawing little desperate gasps from her lips, and that was all that mattered.  
  
“Do you have any idea how hot you are?” he asked her.  
  
Her eyes fluttered open and she gave him a long look as she rocked her hips into his palm and clenched her thighs.  
  
She dug her fingers into the back of his hand. “Can we get out of here?”  
  
“And go where?”  
  
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Your room. Mine…”  
  
He opened his mouth to say yes — God almighty, how he wanted to say yes — but the abbreviated and unfinished plan for seduction still sitting open on his laptop made him stop. Raijin and Fujin would be busy at their game for the next couple of hours, which left them plenty of time to be alone wherever they went. And the way Quistis’s chest heaved as she ground against his hand left him with no doubt what would happen.  
  
She would sleep with him, and then, with her desire satisfied, this would all be over.  
  
Need was the only thing holding her in his orbit and he didn’t want this to end yet.  
  
He groaned softly in frustration.  
  
Self-control and moderation had never been among his talents.  
  
Quistis let up the pressure on his hand. “We don’t have to…if you’re not interested…”  
  
“I’m interested. I just…” Holy shit, he couldn’t believe the words that were about to come out of his mouth. “I don’t want to move that fast.”  
  
She seemed surprised, too. She let go of his hand completely. “Oh. Of course. I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have—”  
  
“No. Don’t say that. Don’t be sorry.”  
  
 _Damn it._ He was already fucking this up.  
  
Now she probably thought that he hardly wanted her at all. This seduction business was an awfully fine line. He had to continually give her enough to convince her of his interest but not enough to fully slacken her desire.  
  
How the hell was he going to manage that?  
  
“Quistis.” He grabbed her hand, brought it up to his mouth, and pressed a long kiss to the back of it, heedless whether anyone else in the library saw. Then, maintaining eye contact all the while, he lowered her hand and planted it upon his thigh. She swallowed hard as he slid her palm up his leg.  
  
He shivered with pleasure as the drag of her touch climbed higher and higher, getting ever closer to the aching part of him, which had already been strained and alert but now jumped to an even higher state of attention at the possibility of her touch. He bit back a moan and paused just short of where he wanted her. He wouldn’t force her there, but he gave her hand a nudge to let her know she was welcome to continue if she chose to.  
  
She licked her lips and splayed her fingers, brushing an exploratory touch across his length.  
  
Seifer let out a harsh breath.  
  
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” he told her, hoping that was clear now. “I want to do everything you do. Probably more, to be honest. And I’m going to if you let me. But when I do, it won't be some rushed thing you end up regretting. Okay? We’ve done that already. I won't let it happen like that again. I’m going to take my time. I’m going to wring every last bit of pleasure out of you I can. And it will be…”  
  
What? What would it be?  
  
She furrowed her eyebrows and slid her hand up to grip him completely through the front of his pants.  
  
Seifer muttered a strangled curse.  
  
He couldn’t think with her touching him there. The world swam in front of his eyes, he grabbed her hand, not sure whether he was going to move it away or hold it there or encourage her to touch him in a way that would be both more and less torturous. In the end, he merely held it, his hips shifting of their own accord.  
  
 _Fuck.  
  
_ What had he been about to say?  
  
“It will be…” He ran out of breath and had to pause to drag one in. “It will be worth waiting for.”  
  
Quistis, whose eyes had been hooded and unfocused, looked up sharply at his words.  
  
Did that mean he’d said the right thing? God, he hoped he’d said the right thing.  
  
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Okay,” she said, her voice so small and tight that he couldn’t read in it whether she was pleased or angry or — he quailed at the very thought — disappointed. She’d spent so much of her life being disappointed in him. It seemed the only thing he could reliably induce in anyone who got close enough to him to begin to care. He didn’t think he could bear letting her down in this, too. This one very primal, very basic thing.  
  
He waited for her to do or say something more, poised in absolute agony — his desire, his heart, seemingly his _whole being_ in the palm of her hand.  
  
She blinked long and slow, her blue eyes dark and intense. And then she squeezed him gently, practically making him levitate off his chair, before turning over her hand to twine her fingers through his.  
  
He watched in silent amazement as she lifted his hand and kissed the back of it, the same way he’d kissed hers before. It felt strange and wonderful, backwards but also somehow incredibly _right_ , her lips so soft and warm in a gesture that he now understood offered affection while demanding nothing in return.  
  
She released a pent up breath and let him go.  
  
“Well…you have work to do. I suppose I should leave you to it.”  
  
“Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked hopefully.  
  
The edges of her mouth curved in the hint of a smile. “Do you have class?”  
  
“No. Do you?”  
  
“No. But Selphie knows that, so she will probably force me to help her out in the quad all day.” She frowned.  
  
He did, too. He didn’t think he could wait until whenever she managed to escape Selphie to see her again. “I go for a run early every morning. Garden’s usually pretty empty. I wouldn’t mind a little company…” he said with a hint of suggestion.  
  
“Yeah?” The flash of interest in her eyes heartened him. “What time?”  
  
“Six. I could put it off until seven, but everyone’s up and about by then.”  
  
And he definitely had a few things he wanted to do other than run which he’d prefer no one be around to see.  
  
“Six is fine.” She collected her book, stood up, and started to leave…then hesitated. “Seifer?”  
  
He turned in his chair to look up at her.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
She clutched her book tighter to her chest. “For not minding what a mess I’ve been this whole time. The Training Center, the experiment, everything just now…”  
  
He chuckled. “It’s really no problem. You’re the hottest mess I’ve ever seen.”  
  
She rolled her eyes but laughed and walked off to check out her book.  
  
Seifer watched her go, admiring the sway of her hips and the shape of her body, accented so nicely by her tight black pants. For a second, a horrible pang of regret fired through him that he’d refused to go with her. If he were any less stubborn and prideful, he would already be alone with her, peeling those pants off and finding out what she looked and felt like underneath them.  
  
Instead, here he sat, banking on the possibility that she might sustain an interest in him long enough for him to go through this whole ridiculous seduction plan.  
  
Suddenly, it all seemed very silly and foolish, but since he’d started down this path he supposed he was doomed to walk it now. He would have to live up to his promises.  
  
Glancing back at his list, a whole _one_ item long, he realized that he was going to need help.  
  
He sure as hell wasn’t going ask anyone for advice.  
  
Which meant…research?  
  
Tapping his fingers on the desk, he contemplated simply typing in the search bar on his computer “ _how to seduce a woman_ ” but he feared what might show up. The last thing he needed was to get himself fired for browsing adult sites in the library on his Garden issued computer. The nanny software installed would snitch on him in a hot second. The fact that he was keeping his list there was bad enough. He’d have to write it down on paper as soon as he got back to his room.  
  
Quistis walked out with her book, casting one last glance at him over her shoulder, and he had the beginnings of an idea.  
  
He couldn’t do research on his computer. But the library had to have all sorts of information on what women wanted. He just needed to look in the right place.  
  
Warily, he glanced over at the brightly colored shelf of paperbacks marked “romance.”  
  
From a distance, he could make out the swooping text of the titles on the spines but not much else. They had a shelf of movies too, but Seifer didn’t think he could stomach those. Nor did he know how he’d watch them without Raijin and Fujin finding out. The books at least he could quietly flip through to the relevant parts.  
  
 _Ah, hell.  
  
_ He grabbed his laptop up in one arm, made sure no one was looking, then snuck over to the shelf.  
  
No time to browse. He grabbed a title that looked promising based on the way the man was holding up a trembling, desperately passionate looking woman on the cover, then another one with a woman lying in bed on the front, grasping the covers, while the hero leaned over her. Both ways he wouldn’t mind seeing Quistis soon.  
  
Stuffing the books behind his laptop to hide them from prying eyes, he quickly walked over the self-checkout and passed them through the machine, lest they set off the damn alarm at the door that went off whenever someone tried to remove non-checked out materials. Whatever the hell the thing did to them with a thump he had no idea, but he was not about to get tackled by a librarian over trying to steal a romance novel.  
  
Research material acquired, he half-walked, half-jogged back to his room.  
  
Even though Raijin and Fujin were both gone, neither expected to return anytime soon, he passed straight through their common room into his bedroom and closed the door behind him.  
  
He still ached with unfulfilled desire. But it could wait.  
  
 _He_ could wait.  
  
And it would be worth every minute.  
  
Flopping down on his bed, he flipped one of the books open and started to read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Pupurun D&D style game I've made up uses some names and places and spells from the game Trials of Mana, which I enjoy dropping references to whenever I can. :)


	7. A Little Intimacy

Chapter 7: A Little Intimacy  
  
Seifer looked down at his handwritten list through bleary eyes. He’d hardly gotten any sleep, but at least he had a solid start now on his plan. Flipping through the first of his library books had taught him a couple of things about women. First and foremost: to be a fantasy romance hero, he had to put her pleasure first. He’d read half the book now, and he was pretty sure the guy in it hadn’t even come once, though he had induced the heroine to three separate times.  
  
Those scenes, he had to admit, were rather enjoyably spicy. He could see why these books were so popular.  
  
But the book had given him a few non-sexual things to add to his list, too. Things he never would have considered before but which seemed obvious in hindsight. Seduction, the author made clear, was not just physical. It was emotional. And while he was not interested in making Quistis fall in love with him, it appeared that ladies liked being romanced a little either way.  
  
Whether he would be able to pull any of it off, he had no idea. But he jotted down a few ideas anyway.  
  
He tucked the list carefully in his bedside drawer and checked the time.  
  
Five forty-five.  
  
Quistis would be here soon.  
  
He fetched his running shoes out from under his bed and pulled them on, then ran his fingers through his hair. He hoped he didn’t look too rumpled. He’d only gotten out of bed fifteen minutes ago after hitting snooze on his alarm twice.  
  
From his duffel, he grabbed a clean water bottle and went down the hall to the bathroom to fill it. He was standing in front of his door, screwing on the lid, when Quistis came around the corner.  
  
She had on a pair of black running shorts, sneakers, and a pink tank top. She’d tied her hair up into a high ponytail that swished behind her head as she walked. She looked absolutely stunning, the muscles in her legs and arms trim but firm, her skin glowing despite the ungodly hour.  
  
“Good morning,” she said with a smile.  
  
Seifer didn’t say anything. He just reached out for her hand.  
  
She tilted her head curiously before giving it to him, her palm settling against his.  
  
He pulled her close and planted a firm kiss on her lips.  
  
 _Hyne_. A man could get used to this…  
  
“Mmm.” He sighed with satisfaction as he released her. “Good morning.”  
  
She flushed prettily.  
  
“You’re a little early,” he pointed out. It wasn’t quite six yet.  
  
She lifted an eyebrow. “So are you.”  
  
Actually, he’d been in the midst of getting ready, but he didn’t think it would help to admit as much. Instead, he smiled in a way he hoped was suave and said, “That’s because I was eager to see you.”  
  
Whenever the hero in the book he was reading said blunt things like that, expressing his desire, it always left the heroine a little breathless. He watched Quistis closely to see if she would react the same. She didn’t quite lose her breath, but her lips parted and she stared up at him, her eyes wide, at a loss for words.  
  
That was good. Right?  
  
He cleared his throat.  
  
“So, how far do you want to go?” he asked and began stretching out his quads. “Usually I run for time rather than distance, but we can take whatever pace you want.”  
  
“Maybe let’s just start and see how it goes?” Quistis suggested.  
  
“Sure.”  
  
They both did a little more stretching, and then they were off, heading down the dormitory hallway toward Garden’s inner concourse. Seifer kept to an easy pace and Quistis jogged alongside him, their steps light as they sailed along. It felt nice, he realized — the sun hardly up, the whole building quiet and still…just the two of them up and moving together.  
  
“Did you get your assessments done last night?” she asked as they jogged.  
  
“No. I got distracted. How about you?”  
  
“Still working on it.”  
  
They passed the infirmary, their breath coming a little faster now. She was matching him easily even though her stride was shorter. Maintaining a steady clip, they circled three times around the whole of Garden before Seifer stopped in front of the directory, out of breath.  
  
He took a long drink from his water bottle. Then — noticing that Quistis didn’t have one — offered it to her. She murmured her thanks before tilting it to her lips, her throat working as she swallowed.  
  
 _Damn. That shouldn’t be so sexy_.  
  
To distract himself, he checked the time.  
  
“Want to grab breakfast with me? The cafeteria just opened.”  
  
Quistis handed him back his water bottle. “Sure. Let’s go.”  
  
When they walked in, the cafeteria was entirely empty except for the staff bustling away behind the counter, preparing the day’s first meal. Seifer often showed up this early, so the cafeteria ladies weren’t surprised to see him. But they did all take note of Quistis with curious looks.  
  
“Get yours to go,” he suggested. “We’ll go eat someplace more private.”  
  
They left a few minutes later with heavily packed go boxes of food and, for Quistis, a gigantic cup of coffee. Garden would begin to stir soon, so Seifer led Quistis to where he knew they wouldn’t be disturbed for at least another half-hour — the quad.  
  
The open air there was brisk but not unpleasant. Seifer paused to drink in deep breaths of it, his heart exhilarated by the beauty of the day. Quistis stopped beside him, the slanted early morning sunlight making her hair shine like gold as she blew a stray bit of it out of her face.  
  
Far below, the sea crashed against Garden’s hull.  
  
They sat down together on a nearby bench.  
  
“The quad sure is lovely when it’s not so busy,” Quistis said. “Do you eat breakfast here every morning?”  
  
“No. But I like to.”  
  
She sent him a canny look. “So…you like to run in the morning before everyone gets up. And you like to eat breakfast in the quad before anyone else gets here. And you like to go through the Training Center late at night before everyone else has gone to bed. I’m sensing a theme here.”  
  
“You’d want to be left alone too if you lived in a place where everybody hated you,” Seifer replied flatly.  
  
She blinked. “I don’t think people _hate_ you…”  
  
“I do. Not everyone though. Some people just think I’m a massive fuck up, like Squall and Rinoa. But that’s even worse in a way.”  
  
Quistis frowned but didn’t offer him any reassuring platitudes, which he appreciated. Honestly, there weren’t any that he would believe. People had good reason to loathe him. He didn’t blame them one bit. And he didn’t expect anyone’s forgiveness.  
  
Letting the subject go, Quistis took a sip of her coffee, then set about devouring what she had in her box.  
  
“Is the bacon better than usual today?” she asked, chewing.  
  
“No. It’s just better first thing. They only make it once, then keep it warm. This is straight out of the pan.”  
  
She sighed and licked her fingers, then took a big bite of pancake.  
  
“Goodness. This is almost worth getting up before dawn for. I didn’t know cafeteria food could taste like this.”  
  
“Try the hash browns.” He held his box up for her.  
  
She looked doubtful — the hash browns were renowned for being a disgusting, soggy mess — but she took forkful anyway and popped it experimentally into her mouth. Her eyes went wide. “They’re crispy!”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“They’re _never_ crispy!”  
  
“Only for the first fifteen minutes of the day.”  
  
She looked at him in amazement. “Can…can I have more?”  
  
“Go for it.”  
  
She took another forkful from his box — a big one this time, and ate it with relish. Seifer grinned. The sun, growing stronger now, warmed his legs and Quistis jostled against him as she ate out of his box. Just to keep things fair, he grabbed a slice of bacon from hers.  
  
When they were done eating, Quistis groaned and stretched her legs out in front of her.  
  
“Gosh, that was good.”  
  
Seifer set his empty box aside and slung his arm up to lay it across the back of the bench. “Glad you enjoyed it.”  
  
“I did,” she said simply, the way she looked at him suggesting that she meant more than just the food.  
  
He turned slightly to face her and brushed his knuckles gently across her cheek. Quistis’s eyes fluttered shut in response. Such a delicate thing — his touch, her reply. Perhaps more affectionate than he was comfortable with. He straightened a little, needing to get back to the sort of thing he felt more at ease with, and leaned in to kiss her.  
  
She must’ve been expecting it, because she immediately turned into him, her hands flying up to frame his face. Her lips tasted of coffee and maple syrup, but as he pushed the kiss deeper, he found the taste he now knew simply as _her_. And God, it was sweet. He groaned and slipped his hand around to the back of her head.  
  
Though she didn’t use any particular verve or skill, Quistis’s kisses were so honest that they flayed him straight open. She didn’t preform for him. Didn’t try to impress. She just kissed him however her passion drove her to. And as she tilted her head, seeking a deeper connection, he couldn’t help but melt.  
  
“After I left the library, I thought about you all night,” she told him, her mouth against his.  
  
He slipped his hand down her back. “Any thoughts in particular you want to share?”  
  
“Only that I don’t understand why you make me feel so impulsive. So out of control.”  
  
Even as she said it, she slid across the bench to press flush up against his side.  
  
“Impulsive and out of control is kind of my signature style,” he replied. “Maybe I’m rubbing off on you.”  
  
She shook her head and laughed. “Shouldn’t that work both ways? Shouldn’t I be making you more restrained?”  
  
Sweet Hyne, she had no idea just how restrained he’d been the past few days. Or how restrained he was being right now, for that matter. Rather than answer her to point it out, he took the opportunity to kiss her again, long and slow. They’d have to go soon, and he needed to get his fill before then — or at least take some of the edge off.  
  
She didn’t object, twining her fingers into his hair.  
  
When at last he judged that they could no longer afford to linger, he broke away.  
  
“We should get going.”  
  
Quistis’s mouth, tender and pink from his kisses, turned down but she nodded. “Selphie will probably be showing up here any minute to get started for the day.”  
  
They collected their trash and deposited it in one of the bins on the way out.  
  
Seifer walked with her back to the dorms, following her all the way to her room. She paused in front of her door and turned to face him. They were alone in the hallway, but not for long.  
  
“Seifer?” she asked softly.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Was this…” She paused, pressed her lips together uncertainly, then visibly gathered the courage to finish her question. “Was this a date?”  
  
The question caught him wholly off-guard. “What? No. Why?”  
  
“It just…it really felt like a date.”  
  
“If it were, it’d be a damn lame one. Going running at six in the morning?”  
  
Quistis looked embarrassed. “Well…it wouldn’t be the worst I’ve ever had.”  
  
Looking back on the morning, Seifer had to admit that he could see where she was coming from. Even though he hadn’t intended to take her on anything resembling a date, they’d spent time together purely for the pleasure of being in one another’s company. Then they’d sat down and had a meal together. And it had been…nice.  
  
More than nice.  
  
But he hadn’t intended for it to be anything formal or official.  
  
“It’s not a date. I just wanted to—” He clapped his mouth shut, the end of that sentence ringing loud and clear and damning in his head.  
  
 _I just wanted to see you_.  
  
Shit. _Had_ this been a date?  
  
“What?” she asked. “What did you want?”  
  
He obviously couldn’t tell her the truth; it would make him look like a total sap. Hell…he already _felt_ like one for having thought it! Scrambling for an answer, her blurted out, “I just wanted to make sure that you would be thinking about me all day.”  
  
“Oh.” She rocked back on her heels and leaned against her door, surveying him from head to toe. “Is all the time I spend today thinking about you going to be leading up to something, or…?”  
  
“It’s definitely leading up to something.”  
  
She stood a little straighter. “Tonight?”  
  
Good grief, he hated having to be the patient one. Was this anything what it had been like for Quistis as his instructor? Him, wanting to barrel ahead, her trying to rein him back in? It was exhausting. Especially because he didn’t _want_ to be cautious here — he only felt like he _should_ be, because he’d decided that he had some ridiculous point to prove about himself and his self-worth.  
  
 _Fuck. Quistis is more than just rubbing off on me. I’m straight up turning into her!  
  
_ “Sure,” he said impulsively, needing some of himself back. “Tonight.”  
  
Quistis’s breath caught and she lifted one of her hands, pressing it over her heart. “Do you want to meet me here? My room’s more private than yours…”  
  
God. She was inviting him to her room tonight.  
  
his could only go one way.  
  
And it would blow his whole list and all of his plans straight to hell.  
  
“Your room sounds great.”  
  
 _Damn it_.  
  
She blushed, looking equal parts excited and embarrassed. “Okay. See you later, then.”  
  
He wanted to kiss her — had planned, vaguely in his head as they were walking back to the dorms, to kiss her — but he didn’t trust himself now.She made him so erratic, he hardly knew what would spill out of his mind next. So before anything new could rise up to blindside him, he muttered goodbye, turned, and fled.  
  
As he walked swiftly back to his own room, his heart pounding, he realized with no small amount of shock that he was nervous.  
  
All of this had him so terrifyingly out of his depth.  
  
Swearing under his breath, he assured himself that at least the confusion and turmoil of whatever the heck was going on between them would be short lived. Quistis would figure out soon enough that he was only good for one thing, and even that on a purely limited time basis. Tonight they would sleep together, and it would all be done, her inexplicable desire for him fulfilled.  
  
Tomorrow morning, he would be back to eating and running alone.  
  
The prospect should not have given him pause.  
  
But it did.  
  
And he didn’t think he cared to examine why.  
  


* * *

  
Quistis tied yet another blue balloon onto the end of a long string of them. Her fingers ached from tying them off, but Selphie had a whole heap of them that she wanted made into what she called “bubble towers.” Sometime overnight, the Garden Festival had taken on an under-the-sea theme, which meant that everyone not involved in stage construction was now occupied making aquatic themed decorations.  
  
She’d been caught by Selphie while attempting to fetch herself a second cup of coffee.  
  
Truthfully, she didn’t much mind. The busy work kept her occupied while she turned over her “date” with Seifer in her head, examining it from every angle.  
  
She still couldn’t believe that she’d gotten out of bed at five-thirty in the morning to go meet him. And for a _run_ , of all things.  
  
When he’d invited her, she’d been so aroused that she probably would have agreed to anything. Though she’d dressed the part, a not insignificant part of her doubted that he actually intended to exercise. She’d made perfectly clear what she wanted from him. And despite his protestations that he didn’t want to go too fast, Quistis had a hard time believing that a man — and Seifer in particular — would actually choose to wait when a woman so obviously signaled her interest and availability.  
  
So when they’d taken off running, she’d been surprised.  
  
Even more surprising though was the fact that she’d _enjoyed_ it.  
  
Being in his company had been surprisingly easy. She’d only just come to accept that they shared a certain physical compatibility. The idea that she might like spending time with him in a non-sexual context had come as a shock.  
  
Then they’d stopped to have breakfast together, and it had only further cemented her suspicion that one or two little dates like this, and she would be in real danger of _liking_ him.  
  
Maybe that was why she had asked him to come back to her room tonight?  
  
Because keeping this thing between them about sex was something she could at least wrap her mind around, even if it made her blush furiously to think of the ways she’d been acting around him lately. What she’d done in the library in particular had been…  
  
Her cheeks grew warm.  
  
 _Oh, Hyne_.  
  
What was happening to her? Who was she becoming?  
  
She could still cancel on him. Say she changed her mind. There was plenty of time…  
  
Except that she didn’t really _want_ to cancel. A small but apparently powerful part of her had been screaming for this for days. And now that she almost had him within her grasp, all that longing and desire finally about to find an outlet, she struggled with the thought of reining herself in again.  
  
After all…why shouldn’t she have this? They’d already done so much. Why not take it all the way and get it out of her system?  
  
She’d been good for so long. She’d been _perfect_.  
  
With Seifer, she could be messy.  
  
And it felt like such a _relief_.  
  
An embarrassing, unfamiliar, intense sort of relief, but relief all the same. This wildness lived inside of her and it needed to get out. She couldn’t think of a better place for it than with him — a man who knew her well but who had no room to pass judgement.  
  
“How’s it coming along?” Selphie asked as she stopped by where Quistis was working, dragging along Xu by the arm.  
  
“Good. I’m almost done with these.”  
  
“Awesome!”  
  
Xu scowled, but Selphie didn’t seem to notice. She pulled Xu forward and pushed her down into the seat next to Quistis’s.  
  
“Why don’t you help Quisty finish up here? Then we’ll get started on painting backgrounds for the stage! I’m off to meet with the head of the cafeteria about putting together a whole under-sea themed banquet! I was thinking we could try to catch some fresh fish to serve, plus stuff like little sea star shaped cookies and blue jello cups with sea scenes suspended inside. This is going to be so fun!”  
  
Selphie skipped off, leaving Xu and Quistis behind to complete their task.  
  
“How’d you get caught?” Quistis asked her friend.  
  
“Bathroom.”  
  
“Oh, wow. That’s ruthless.”  
  
“Tell me about it.” Xu grabbed a balloon and roughly added it to their bubble tower.  
  
“If it makes you feel any better, I told her to talk to Squall about it. Hopefully he’ll quash the whole thing,” Quistis said.  
  
Xu snorted out a laugh. “You’re the one who sent her? Oh man. For your own sake, I’m going to pretend I don’t know that. According to Nida, she blew into Squall’s office and just _destroyed_ him. Poor guy didn’t have a chance to even get a word in edgewise. Before she left, she not only had permission to hold the festival, she had him signed up to help out.”  
  
Quistis put a hand over her mouth to cover her gasp. “Oh no.”  
  
“He’s not too pleased.”  
  
“I can imagine.”  
  
“She’s really getting everyone involved this time, isn’t she? Looks like she even managed to talk the old Disciplinary Committee into helping out,” Xu said and gestured toward the entrance to the Quad, where Seifer had just appeared with Raijin and Fujin in tow.  
  
He’d changed since their morning run into his usual coat, vest, and dark pants — absolutely nothing out of the ordinary — but with her newly heightened sense of him, he looked incredibly handsome. A surge of longing nearly made her sigh, but she held it lest Xu overhear.  
  
“I’m surprised she asked him at all,” Xu continued. “You know how she feels about him and what happened in Trabia.”  
  
“Maybe she’s moving on. Embracing forgiveness. If anything could make her do that, it would be the Garden Festival.”  
  
“I suppose,” Xu said and continued to watch him.  
  
Quistis watched, too — glad for Xu’s interest which helped to mask her own.  
  
Seifer had walked in full of confidence and bravado, just the way he’d carried himself his whole life. But it faltered slightly when he approached the stage. She might not have noticed it if she hadn’t been watching closely. It looked almost like trepidation. Or certainly the closest thing to it she’d ever seen out of him.  
  
 _You’d want to be left alone too if you lived in a place where everybody hated you_ , he’d said.  
  
She’d never considered what it must be like for him, living here. How isolating it must feel.  
  
Raijin and Fujin didn’t seem to share in his fate. As they were walking over, Zell leapt to his feet and waved. “Hey, Raij! Fu! C’mere! You can help me out with this!”  
  
Though Seifer had not been included in the invitation, he trailed along behind them anyway and Zell was gracious enough to quietly provide him with tasks, though as Quistis watched she noticed that Seifer consistently got all the worst tasks. All the heavy lifting and the hauling and everything unskilled that didn’t require working closely with anyone else.  
  
She frowned, bothered but not sure what to do as he carried sand bags past her station.  
  
“Do you mind if I ask him to help us out with the decorations?” Quistis asked Xu.  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Seifer.”  
  
Xu looked puzzled. “Why?”  
  
“Why would you mind? Or why would I ask him?”  
  
“Both.”  
  
Quistis didn’t get the chance to reply because Selphie arrived back in the quad then, blowing in with her usual verve, and setting the whole place into a rush of frantic activity again. She lost track of Seifer and what he was doing in the mayhem.  
  
By the end of the day, she was exhausted and incredibly happy to have the excuse of _actual_ _work_ tomorrow to get herself out of party-duty.  
  
She ate dinner and returned to her room where she kicked off her shoes and laid on her bed to read some of her book, thinking she had at least a couple of hours before Seifer would come knocking.  
  
A mere twenty-odd minutes later though, a soft rap on her door brought her bolt upright.  
  
Crap. Was it him already?  
  
She was totally unprepared — her hair still up in a messy ponytail from being out in the breezy quad all day, a mark on her cheek from where she’d been leaning against her hand, her makeup smudged. She rubbed frantically at her cheek to at least try to do away with the mark and went to the door, hoping it would be Xu or Rinoa or anyone except for…  
  
“Seifer.”  
  
He offered her a small, self-deprecating smile. “Wow. Don’t sound so excited to see me.”  
  
“Sorry. It’s not that I’m not…I just…” Ugh. They couldn’t have this conversation in the hallway. She stepped out of the way and waved for him inside. “Come in.”  
  
When he stepped past her, she couldn’t help noticing that he smelled nice. Was that cologne? It didn’t seem strong enough for that, but there was a subtle, very nice scent following him that she hadn’t ever noticed before. His hair was also neatly slicked back, not a single strand out of place. He’d obviously put himself together before coming over, which only made her feel like more a schlub for not skipping dinner in order to shower, shave her legs, and put on all her best lingerie.  
  
 _Hyne, I’m bad at this_.  
  
She’d never invited a man over for sex before.  
  
As the door closed behind her and Seifer turned around slowly, taking in her room, she was seized by awkward nerves.  
  
 _Oh, God. I’m going to have sex with him.  
  
_ _And he’s going to have sex with me.  
  
_ _Where…_ how _do we start?  
  
_ She licked her lips and crossed her arms. “Do you want to…um…”  
  
Seifer held out a small white box. “I brought cake.”  
  
 _Oh, thank God.  
  
_ “Thought I owed you a gift or something since I made you get up so early this morning,” he continued. “It’s vanilla. They also had carrot. But who the hell likes carrot cake?”  
  
Quistis flashed him an amused smile. “I do.”  
  
His lip curled back in disgust. “Even with raisins in it?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Quistis…fuck. That’s disgusting.”  
  
“No it’s not.”  
  
“The _last_ place raisins belong is in a _cake_.”  
  
“They’re just dried fruit. Dried fruits are used in all sorts of cakes and breads and cookies.”  
  
“Maybe. But the raisins aren’t even carrot cake’s only questionable ingredient. There’s also the _carrots_. And nuts.”  
  
Quistis couldn’t help but laugh. “Dare I ask how do you feel about oatmeal raisin cookies?”  
  
“You mean those fucking camouflaged assholes, out there floating around pretending to be chocolate chip?”  
  
Their banter had relaxed her nerves somewhat, so she gestured for him to sit down. Her room didn’t have many options — just the bed and a desk chair. She’d assumed Seifer would sit on the edge of the bed, but he pulled out the chair instead and swung it around to face the bed. She sat and he positioned himself across from her, putting them knee-to-knee. He leaned forward against his legs and opened the cake box between them. Warm, sweet scent wafted up to Qusitis’s nose.  
  
He handed her a fork and they both started eating, sharing a single slice between them.  
  
“Is that your library book?” he asked, gesturing with his fork to the book she’d been reading. She’d left if lying face down on the bed to mark her spot when she’d gotten up to answer the door. “Looks like you’re already quite a way through it. Must be good.”  
  
“Yeah. I’ve been reading this author’s work for a while. I don’t like this series quite as much as her first, but it’s fun.”  
  
“What’s it about?” Seifer asked. “I can’t tell from the cover. Something about a girl who bursts into flames or something?”  
  
Quistis chuckled. “Those aren’t flames. That’s the veil between worlds. The series is about a girl who can cross into death and back.”  
  
Seifer’s eyebrows went up. “That seems kind of heavy.”  
  
“Sometimes it is. But mostly it’s an adventure.”  
  
Seifer reached past her to pick up the book. She watched as he turned it over and read a few lines on the page she’d left off on. “Sounds kind of interesting. I’ve always been more into movies than books though.”  
  
He handed the book back to her and she slid a bookmark into place before tossing it onto the floor beside her bed. “What kind of movies?”  
  
He shrugged. “Any kind, really. Used to like the big adventures, too. But now…” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I guess adventure isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. Is it?”  
  
“Definitely not.”  
  
“Which is why I don’t understand this game Raijin and Fujin like to play at all. Remember last night in the library? I told you they were playing with Zell and Nida and a library girl?”  
  
Quistis twisted her brain to remember. “Something about sprites?”  
  
“Yeah. It’s this Pupurun role playing game. They play it all the time and have been on my case to join in. But I don’t see the point in pretending to go on some big adventure all about fighting monsters and defeating the big bad to save the princess. You know? I can do that in real life. I _have_ done that in real life. And I was the big bad.”  
  
Quistis slowly licked a bit of frosting off her fork, giving her time to think about what he was saying. “You’re assuming that the point of the game is to defeat the bad guy. But maybe it isn’t about that at all.”  
  
He frowned. “What else could it be?”  
  
“The story. The journey.”  
  
He rolled his eyes.  
  
“Plus, redemption arcs _are_ a thing, you know,” she added, a little forcefully. “All the books I read have them. It’s more popular than you might think…the rakishly handsome villain who is brought back to the side of good, who has done terrible things but changes himself for the better.”  
  
The side of Seifer’s mouth quirked. “Are you suggesting that I’m rakishly handsome?”  
  
“I’m sure that fact would hardly come as news to you.”  
  
“I know _some_ people think that I’m good looking—” he started.  
  
“Like your lovelorn cadet?” Quistis interjected.  
  
He smoothly ignored her attempt to goad him and continued, “But hearing that _you_ think so is something else.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because you’re the mighty Quistis Trepe. Known the world over for her beauty and perfection. Being admired by you is like being admired by a goddess from on high.”  
  
Quistis shook her head, a little embarrassed. “You’re sitting here in my room. I think that fact alone makes it safe to say I find you attractive.”  
  
“ _Rakishly_ handsome?” he pressed.  
  
“ _Incredibly_ ,” she replied with obviously excessive gusto just to shut him up.  
  
He leaned back in his chair, grinning. “Speaking of being in your room…” He cast a glance around. “Are all the single rooms this small? I always imagined them a lot bigger with…I dunno. More amenities. Thought I’d be living large once I made SeeD, but this isn’t really any better than the rest of the dorms. At least in the shared rooms we have a common space for furniture and stuff.”  
  
“All the single rooms are this size. Only the suites are bigger. Xu has a kitchenette and a private bathroom. So do Squall and Rinoa.”  
  
Seifer huffed. “Why does Xu get a suite but you don’t?”  
  
“She outranks me.”  
  
“How? You saved the world.”  
  
“I guess that doesn’t count toward Garden’s internal hierarchy.”  
  
Seifer speared another bite of cake. “Well, it should.”  
  
“Agreed.”  
  
“Must be nice, having your own bathroom. Can you imagine? Just showering for however long you want in private? Especially after those hard training days when you’re all tight and sore.” He cringed and rolled his shoulders a little. “Oh man. Don’t tell me she has a bathtub…”  
  
“She doesn’t. But Squall and Rinoa do.”  
  
“ _Ugh_. Of course they do. What _doesn’t_ Squall have?”  
  
“Me,” Quistis said quietly.  
  
Almost immediately, she wanted to take it back.  
  
He went quiet and she couldn’t bring herself to look up at him, afraid she would see how ridiculous she was being reflected in his eyes. Seifer’s rivalry with Squall had been about a lot of things, but never her. They had never fought over her affection or her attention like they had with Matron, and Sis, and eventually — to some extent — Rinoa. Including herself in those ranks was probably overstepping. But…  
  
He set the mostly empty cake box aside on her desk and took her hand.  
  
His touch, so hot and so firm, made her shiver.  
  
She glanced up and found him looking down at her with an intensity that took her breath away, his green gaze never wavering from her face.  
  
“Do _I_ have you?” he asked.  
  
“Yes,” she whispered. “Right now, you do.”  
  
He leaned forward and kissed her. Tender, at first. Then harder.  
  
God. She loved the way he kissed. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was a matter of technique or if it was just that she was so into him which made every press of his lips and every sweep of his tongue absolute heaven, but she melted underneath his touch — just like she had every time before.  
  
“Will I still have you tomorrow?” he asked, murmuring the words directly against her mouth.  
  
“Tomorrow?” She couldn’t think past tonight. Past this moment and these seconds. Past the crawling of her hands up his sides.  
  
“I don’t want you just for one night,” he rumbled.  
  
Quistis shivered. “How many nights do you want me for?”  
  
He pulled back a little, his brows crinkled, puckering the scar between his eyes. “As many as I can get.”  
  
Her heart quaking, Quistis grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him forward, needing him off the chair and on her bed, on top of her, his weight pressing her down into her mattress. With all the hours she’d spent recently lying in just this spot, imagining his body looming over her, hot and smooth and strong — and now to be so close to finally _having_ it…suddenly she was starving for him.  
  
He was right. One night hardly seemed like enough to appease this ache.  
  
As she pulled him out of the chair, he grunted and flatted his hands against the mattress on either side of her hips. She slowly laid back as he leaned over her, his kisses moving from her lips to trail down the side of her neck.  
  
Quistis slipped an arm around his shoulders and arched into him.  
  
He grunted.  
  
But not, she thought, with pleasure.  
  
That had sounded more like…pain?  
  
Quistis looked at him with alarm. “Did I do something wrong?”  
  
“No.” He scooped her up by the small of her back and grunted again as he pressed their bodies together. Now Quistis was sure. That hadn’t been a love groan. It had sounded more like an old man getting up out of a low chair.  
  
“You’re in pain.”  
  
“No I’m not.”  
  
He slid his hand around to her front and moved up her side toward her breast. Before he could get there, she gave his shoulder a firm squeeze.  
  
“ _Arg!_ ” His elbow buckled and he nearly fell against her before catching himself again.  
  
“Seifer.” She propped herself up.  
  
“It’s fine.” He tried to kiss her again but she turned her head so he got her cheek instead of her mouth. “I’m just a little sore from Garden Festival duty.”  
  
“Oh, Seifer.” Of course he would be sore after all the heavy lifting he’d been doing. She’d completely forgotten about it. Now she felt like the worst kind of person — too self-centered and selfish to consider whether her partner would even be in proper shape to do this tonight. “You’re more than a _little_ sore.”  
  
“I’ll be fine.”  
  
“Probably. But it’s my fault you were there to begin with.” She took him by the arms and pushed him up off her.  
  
He gave her a dejected look and went to stand up, but as soon as she could wiggle out from beneath him she urged him back toward the bed. “Lie down. On your stomach.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
She gave him a shove. “Just do it.”  
  
It took some urging, but as soon as she got him stretched out on her bed, she climbed on top of him, straddling his hips and butt.  
  
“Quistis…this isn’t…”  
  
“Shh.” She slid her hands up underneath his shirt and put the heels of both hands against his bare back. Brief, firm circles always worked best for her, so that’s what she did to him, working at the tight muscles she found. His breath hitched and she saw his eyes screw tightly shut as his hands tightened on her blankets.  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” he said on a sigh.  
  
She climbed higher, toward where she knew he was more sore, and the groan she got this time was half pain and half ragged pleasure.  
  
“ _Oh, God_.”  
  
“Let me know if I do anything too painful,” she told him.  
  
He could only moan in response.  
  
Quistis hitched his shirt up higher and, leaning forward onto her knees, methodically worked her way across his back, taking time to rub her thumbs up and down the length of his spine and up underneath both of his shoulder blades. He bore it in silence punctuated only by gasps and muffled utterances of agonized relief.  
  
The intimacy of the scene did not escape her notice.  
  
Something about it made her heart swell and ache for him right along with the rest of her.  
  
“Is this where it’s the worst?” she asked, brushing a touch over a particularly jumpy muscle in his right shoulder.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’ll be gentle,” she promised and leaned forward to tend to it carefully, nearly lying down across his bare back to do so. His eyes fluttered open for a brief moment but closed again when she pressed at a thready knot in the sore muscle.  
  
“I’m sorry you got dragged into the whole festival committee thing because of me,” she said softly.  
  
“I’ve been dragged into worse things,” he muttered. “This one’s had a lot better benefits than most.”  
  
She smiled and pressed a kiss to the middle of his back.  
  
He turned over onto his side and rolled her off into his arms.  
  
“You are too fucking good. You know that?” he said and then kissed her, deep and hard, his hand tangling in her hair to hold her there while his tongue did things to her mouth no one had ever dared to do before.  
  
Quistis let out a muffled noise of surrender and hooked one leg over his hip.  
  
“I don’t deserve you,” he ground out, his hand leaving her hair to brush down her side and finally capture her breast. “But I’m going to take you anyway.”  
  
“ _Yes._ Please.”  
  
Quistis thrust her body forward into his touch. His big hand encompassed her breast easily but with the way he bit back a noise, she thought he was pleased with the weight and size of it anyway. His touch left her for a second, only to burrow underneath her shirt, seeking skin-on-skin contact.  
  
“Take it off,” she urged him, pulling at her own shirt. She had on a tank top with a sweater over top, her regular bra underneath. Way more layers than they needed right now. She felt as if she might suffocate underneath them.  
  
He pushed up the sweater and tank top together as one. Quistis rolled partway onto her back in order to get it over her shoulders, and then he had it off. He tossed it onto the floor and looked down at her.  
  
“This is what you looked like last time,” he told her.  
  
 _In the Training Center, when they’d…  
  
_ A shiver moved through her at the memory of his body thrusting against her, magic and friction and chemistry combining in the dark to drive her swiftly and irrevocably toward combustion.  
  
They were not in the dark this time. She laid back, hooking her leg around his thigh, as his gaze drifted from her throat to the tops of her breasts to her flat belly. His fingers traced slowly down her midline from clavicle to belly button and then back up again, driving her crazy. And then, _finally_ , he dipped his index finger into the cup of her bra and pulled it down.  
  
The combination of the cool air inside her room and the heat of Seifer’s gaze made her nipple tighten almost painfully. He looked only for a moment though before cupping it once again with his hand — no barriers this time.  
  
“Fuck, Quistis. You’re beautiful.”  
  
She captured his mouth with hers, her body drawing taut as a bowstring beneath his touch. Her own hands wandered frantically and without purpose, moving up and down his back, to his shoulders, into his hair, and down his chest, laid mostly bare by the way she’d pushed his shirt up earlier. There was so much of him she wanted to touch. When her fingers moved down over the hard muscles of his abdomen and discovered a faint trail of hair heading south, he grunted and rolled partly on top of her, pinning her hand there.  
  
“I want you,” she breathed in his ear.  
  
“I know. I want you, too.”  
  
She whimpered and tried to rock her hips up into his. “Then take me.”  
  
Seifer swore and released her breast to plunge his hand downward, skimming over her belly to the waistband of her pants. Quistis could not suppress the cry that rose from her throat when he slipped his hand down inside, reaching for and finding the hot, wet ache between her legs.  
  
“ _Seifer_.” She bit onto the bunched up fabric of his shirt and arched up into his touch. God, it had never felt like this when she touched herself, the pleasure knifing straight through her. Seifer’s groan vibrated into her chest, somehow only increasing the sensation of his fingers stroking at her most intimate place.  
  
“Hyne, you’ll kill me,” he muttered.  
  
He found a rhythm that brought her up off the mattress, gasping with pleasure, and kept at it — rubbing his fingers in a fast, tight circle that made her cry out against him.  
  
 _Oh, God. Oh, God_.  
  
Days of tension coiled tight within her. Days of wanting and building anticipation, all of it centered in her core underneath the confident slide of his touch. She wanted more than this. Wanted more of him. Would have liked to buck him off, roll him onto his back, and ride him into oblivion, but the mere thought of doing so shot her straight into the stratosphere.  
  
She paused for a breathless moment at the height — poised to fall and to crash — and grasped tight to Seifer. He murmured something heated and unintelligible in her ear a split second before it took hold of her.  
  
She came. Rough and hard. A breathless, wracking thing.  
  
When it was done, pleasure continued to rocket through her in little aftershocks that had her trembling against him, whimpering.  
  
He swore softly, extracted his hand, and kissed her, swallowing up her little cries.  
  
“I have to go,” he whispered, his voice ragged.  
  
Reality slammed into Quistis with a thud. “What? Why?”  
  
He shook his head. “Right now I’m _so_ …that if I stay…I can’t…”  
  
“I _want_ you to stay.”  
  
“I want to stay, too.”  
  
“Then I’m not seeing the prob—”  
  
He stopped her with a kiss. He cupped her face with both hands and they were shaking. “Will I still have you tomorrow?” he asked, echoing his words from earlier.  
  
This time, Quistis had an answer. “Yes.”  
  
“Then I have to go.”  
  
“Seifer, I don’t understand…”  
  
He gathered her close and tucked his face against the curve of her neck, breathing deep. “I’m not sure I understand either. Goddamn, you have no idea how badly I want to _bury_ myself in you right now. How ridiculously hot that was and how much I want to see you come like that over and over. But—” He shivered and had to pause to rein himself back in again. “Hyne. I’ve _really_ got to go before I fuck everything up again.”  
  
 _Again?_ What was he talking about?  
  
Did he mean in general? Or did he think he had already messed something up between them? Something that would keep him from sleeping with her…?  
  
Was this about him not wanting to go too fast?  
  
Of all the things in his life he could finally decide to take a measured approach toward, why the hell did it have to be this?  
  
He pushed away from her, up off the bed, forked a hand through his hair, and forced a smile onto his face. “Goodnight, Quistis.”  
  
She sat up, still wobbly, and swallowed back a pleading request for him to stay — to crawl into her bed and make love to her all night long, holding her well into the morning. Maybe he was right. That wasn’t what they were to each other, she reminded herself. Not yet.  
  
Could they be though? Someday?  
  
She hoped so.  
  
Sweet Hyne. She _hoped so_.  
  
Tonight hadn’t been enough. Every step she took with him only ever seemed to open up a whole new level of desire and longing. How much deeper could it go?  
  
If the level of distress she felt at watching him leave was any indication — it went all the way to the darkest, most secret reaches of her very soul.  
  
“Goodnight, Seifer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small bathtub reference in there for RydiaPryde. ;)


	8. Weary Hearts

Chapter 8: Weary Hearts  
  
Being a romance novel hero _sucked_.

Seifer couldn’t believe he had walked out of Quistis’s room. All the way back to his own, he marveled at his own stubborn stupidity. He was horny as hell, and she wanted to sleep with him. Had even asked him to stay! So _why the fuck_ was he pacing out the length of his bed in an agitated fury instead of spending the night buried in the heat and wonder of everything she was willing to offer?

All this nonsense and agony, just because he was afraid she would tire of him as soon as he slept with her?

Since when did he let fear rule his life?

He stormed over to his bedside table, ripped open the drawer, and pulled out his idiotic “seduction” plan.

Before heading over to Quistis’s room, he’d circled a few items that he thought might help — key pointers like: _control the situation_ and _get her off with just your hands_ and _try to leave some of her wants unfulfilled_.

It had all seemed well and good on paper. And, insomuch as it mirrored the book he’d been reading, had seemed pretty fool-proof. But nothing had prepared him for how goddamn _hard_ it would be. Both figuratively and (as it happened) literally. Though now that he thought about it, he did sort of vaguely remember some scenes in the book covering the male hero’s suffering as he walked around possessed by fiery desire. Seifer had skimmed sections comprised mostly of dialogue. Now he wondered if all that dialogue wasn’t just rambling curse words and the man wondering aloud why he was being such a fucking moron.

Because this was awful.

All of it.

Okay…maybe not _all_ of it.

For a brief few minutes there, it had actually been pretty spectacular. And not just the bit where he’d touched Quistis and watched her come undone, but everything leading up to it. Including when she’d pushed him face down on her bed, climbed onto his back, and worked magic with her hands over his sore muscles.

God, that had been…

He didn’t have a word for it.

Not just physically pleasing — though it was — but spiritually, too. He’d just spent the entire afternoon with people who loathed him, carrying the weight of his crimes until his back and shoulders ached from it, and he’d gone to her weary and worn. She’d noticed. _Cared_. And soothed what ailed him.

And that was not something Seifer was used to.

He put a hand over his heart, vaguely aware of it aching, and flopped down on his bed.

His lonely, cold, narrow little bed.

He sighed, trailed his hand down from his chest to his belly, and considered his options.

The rhythmic thumping of his heartbeat pounded in his ears, his whole body seeming to pulse along with it. He felt agitated and wired and wiggled his toes as he laid there, wound too tight to sit still. It made sense to try and take the edge off. But he didn’t really want to. His sexual frustration had passed into something closer to anger.

A trip through the Training Center sounded more immediately satisfying.

Maybe once he’d done that, he would be calm enough to finish himself off.

Grumbling under his breath, he sat up, fetched Hyperion from its case, and set off.

* * *

The next morning, Seifer blinked hard as he fought back exhaustion while watching his class. He’d hardly gotten any sleep. After cutting a bloody swath through the grat population, showering, and giving himself an incredibly unsatisfying hand job, he’d spent the rest of the night tossing and turning. Now, after several nights of shit sleep, he could barely put two words together, let alone focus on teaching a class.

“Mr. Almasy?”

He struggled out of his brain fog to try to find who had called out to him.

Alexandra Heller — the cadet who Quistis suspected was sweet on him — stood holding a sword far too big for her. “Can you show me how to use this again?” she asked.

“Use the one you were training with last week,” he told her.

“But this one is the stand-in for a gunblade. Right?”

“You’re not in gun blade training. This is a general combat class.”

“I know. But…I’d like to learn.” She hefted the sword again, the muscles in her arms visibly straining.

Because gunblades tended to be bulkier, with an awkward center of gravity compared to other swords, Garden had made up these swords as fobs for use in early training. He’d trained with one as a cadet before moving onto the real thing. Squall had, too. Usually people couldn’t compensate for the limitations or overcome its cumbersome nature. Gunblade wasn’t a rare specialty for nothing.

“Cadet Heller…” He sighed. “You don’t have what it takes.”

She didn’t even flinch at his stark assessment. “I could. If _you_ taught me.”

Seifer fought the urge to roll his eyes. “The only gunblade training you’re going to get from me is when I use mine to beat your ass if you don’t get back on task.”

Cadet Heller flashed him a cheeky grin, as if she were not at all opposed to the idea of a spanking-by-gunblade, and flounced off, back to her sparring partner.

_Maybe Quistis has a point about her…_

Seifer moved himself to the other side of the class and picked out one of the boys to observe — a quiet, wiry kid who hadn’t quite filled out yet but who possessed a great natural feel for the intricacies of battle. He was an unassuming looking kid at the outset, but Seifer suspected he’d go far. He was just ordering the class to start their cool downs when Squall walked in.

_Not the visitor I was expecting today_.

“Hi,” Squall said as he approached.

“Checking up on me?” Seifer asked.

“Not because I want to.”

Seifer sighed. “It’s part of the deal. I know.”

His teaching position was somewhat probationary in nature and had been given to him with the understanding that it would all happen under Squall’s supervision. At first, Seifer had thought the whole thing would be untenable for both of them. But Squall had been remarkably hands-off and (Seifer had to grudgingly admit) whenever Squall had offered advice, it had always been pointed and impersonal and useful. Grateful as Seifer was for how it had worked out, he didn’t figure that meant he had to be polite about these regular check-ins.

“That one cadet is using a sword that’s too big for her,” Squall commented after looking over the class.

“I know.”

Squall squinted. “Is it the gunblade trainer?”

“Yep.”

“She’s going to be a gunbladist?”

“Nope.”

“Then why—?” Squall paused, shook his head. “Actually…you know what? I don’t care. You’re obviously on top of it.”

“Obviously.”

They stood for a moment in silent agreement over how well this was going and how apparent it was that Squall did not need to be here.

“Just make sure you get your assessments in on time,” Squall finally said.

“Not a problem.” If he could avoid Garden Festival duty on the way back to his room after this and avoid falling asleep on the couch once he got there, he figured he could probably finish them before lunch.

Squall nodded and, not making eye contact, announced, “I’m going to try to get you a second class next semester.”

Seifer perked up. “You are?”

“Yeah.”

Seifer cleared his throat. “Got any particular class in mind?”

Squall nodded. “I don’t want to tell you yet, in case it doesn’t go through. But I think you’ll be happy with it.”

The possibility that Squall might mean the gunblading class was almost too good to contemplate. Seifer didn’t want to get his hopes up that high, but the possibility of actually teaching the thing he knew the most about? Of being recognized as an expert in something? In being handed an _advanced_ class to handle on his own?

His pride needed that boost. Desperately.

“Thanks,” he said, though it was utterly inadequate a word for what he was feeling.

Squall kept his gaze trained on the class. “No problem.”

Heart pounding with excitement, Seifer waited until Squall left and then dismissed his class a full five minutes early. He rushed back to his room, hoping either Raijin or Fujin would be there so that he could share the news.

When he arrived at his room, he found it disappointingly empty. Since he wasn’t usually around at this time of day — occupied with his class — he had no idea where Fujin and Raijin might be or what time they would be back.

Ah well. Maybe it was for the best.

He still had to finish his assessments, after all. And it would be a lot easier to do that without his posse hanging around, distracting him.

As he settled in on the couch with his laptop, intent on finishing his work, his tortured thoughts of Quistis from the night before slipped to the back of his mind. Still humming. But not the roar they’d been earlier that morning.

Things were looking up.

Maybe it would be a good day after all.

* * *

Quistis cursed under her breath as she ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing it down, and caught her finger in an unexpected knot. Normally her hair was pretty low maintenance. It hardly ever tangled. But, then again, normally she didn’t spent the entire night tossing and turning with such sheer ferocity. She hadn’t gotten to sleep until well after three in the morning, and even then it had been more of a disturbed, unrestful doze than anything else.

Her eyes still felt puffy and sore as she dismissed her class for the day.

From her place near her desk, she peered out into the hallway, half-hopeful and half-afraid that Seifer would be standing there, waiting to see her.

She desperately wanted to talk to him about why he’d walked out on her, but she had no idea what to say.

He’d seemed into it. _Really_ into it.

But apparently not enough to actually sleep with her. Or even to stick around long enough for her to stop quivering from the orgasm he’d given her.

Part of her was relieved that he was keeping her at arm’s length. The rest of her, however, felt abandoned. So many important people had walked out on her in her life. Having him bring her to such an intense, vulnerable place and then turn his back on her had cut deeper the longer she’d dwelled on it until now it ached in her chest as a raw, gaping wound.

_Ugh. Let’s face it. I can’t do casual sex_.

Though, at this rate, it seemed they might never even actually even get to the “sex” part.

Her own emotions were complicated enough without him making things even more confusing.

Damn it.

She _really_ needed to talk to him.

She didn’t see him in the hallway, so she leaned even farther until it was clear that no one was waiting for her.

Her hands clutched the side of her desk in irritation. Earlier, she’d tried to catch him after his class but he’d already been gone from the Training Center when she arrived. Now that he’d failed to show up at hers, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was avoiding her.

In her drained and exhausted state, the possibility _seriously_ pissed her off.

They were going to do a lot more than talk when she finally tracked him down. She was going to punch him right in his big, fat _stupidly_ handsome face. With that in mind, she charged out of her classroom and headed for the dorms. She didn’t much care who saw her — the anger clear on her face more than enough to convince anyone who saw her that this was clearly not a friendly social call — as she stormed down the hallway toward Seifer’s door. For a second, she spared a moment’s consideration for the fact that Raijin or Fujin might answer, then decided she didn’t care and banged hard with her fist, three sharp raps.

The door slid open a second later.

Seifer. And he was smiling.

His pleased expression only incensed her further.

All day she’d been tearing herself apart, and here he was, enjoying his day?

“Hey!” he said, an uncharacteristically bright edge to his voice.

“Hi,” Quistis replied, cold as ice. “Can I come in?”

The cutting nature of her tone wiped the smile straight off his face.

“Uh…” He had the good sense to hesitate. “Sure.”

She charged past him, into the common area of his dorm room. No one else was around, and an open laptop sat on the couch. Apparently, he’d been working.

“Man, you’ve really perfected the scary Instructor voice,” he was saying behind her. “Do cadets shit their pants when you talk like that?”

Quistis whirled around. “ _You’re_ the one who should be scared,” she hissed.

His eyebrows shot up. “Me? Why?”

“You know why.”

“I’m not sure that I do.”

She crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “You walked out on me. No explanation. No nothing. You just left.”

His mouth fell open and he sputtered for a second. “I told you why.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. I said—”

“That you didn’t want to fuck everything up again? Yeah. I remember that. But it means _nothing_ to me as an explanation. I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to figure it out. I mean… _again_? What’s that supposed to mean? When did you fuck up the first time that you’re so worried about repeating it? And how the hell is walking out right in the middle of being intimate supposed to help in _any_ way?”

He flushed red. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I don’t know when Raij and Fu might come back.”

“If you weren’t being such an ass, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all!”

“Damn it. I’m not being an ass. I’m trying to—” He snapped his mouth shut and glared at her.

“No. Finish that sentence. You’re trying to what? Drive me insane?”

“I’m trying to do this right.”

Quistis stared at him, baffled. “Refusing to sleep with me and then avoiding me is doing it right?”

“I haven’t been avoiding you.”

“You weren’t in the Training Center at the end of your class. Did you let them out early just so I wouldn’t catch you?”

“I let them out early. But it had nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, well…that makes me feel better,” she hissed underneath her breath.

His hand tightened into a fist and his eyebrows pinched together, puckering his scar. “Why the hell are you so angry?” he asked acidly. “It’s not like you didn’t get yours. I’m the one who left with the hard-on from hell.”

“That was entirely your choice,” she spit furiously back. “And I still don’t understand why. If you don’t want this — _me_ — just tell me so I can move on.”

His voice pitched even lower. “How can you think after last night that I don’t want you?”

“Because if you did, you would’ve stayed.”

“If I stayed, it would’ve been the damn Training Center safe room all over again!”

Realization dawned.

_Oh my God_.

Quistis searched his eyes, looking for the truth. Could it be…? Was he still embarrassed about his “quick performance” that night? Was all this teasing and delaying because now he had developed some kind of complex about proving that he could be a slow and self-controlled lover?

“Are you…” Oh, Hyne. How could she ask this without making things even worse. “Are you deliberately trying to draw things out between us?”

His shoulders squared. “I told you I wasn’t going to rush through this again.”

Good grief. He really _was_ doing all this just to prove that he wasn’t a bad lover, wasn’t he?

“Seifer…I—” She paced away from him and back again, dragging her hands through her hair. “At this point, I’ve got no objections to fast. But there _is_ such a thing as too slow, you know.”

He looked miffed. “Are you giving me an ultimatum?”

“I’m giving you a suggestion.”

He paused to consider her words, but he had that stubborn clench to his jaw that let her know he wasn’t going to take her advice. Once committed to a path, Seifer tended to stay on it to the bitter end. Often to his own detriment. She would have to forcefully shove him off it if she wanted him to change course.

If he wanted to tease…well then, two could play at that game.

If he was half as interested in her as she was in him, then she could have him turned inside out within a week. She had to admit, the idea had a certain heady appeal. Having someone as powerful as him wrapped around her little finger, whimpering for her love, would be almost as good as the moment they both finally gave in.

Maybe that was part of why he was doing this.

Control.

Perhaps he wanted to have the girl everyone in Garden claimed to desire on her knees before him.

Well, no way was she going to sit and be passively dangled along. He was going to get a dose of his own medicine. And it would be delicious.

He stepped closer to her, a wicked gleam to his eye that made her blood run hot. “Your _suggestion_ is that I just take you?”

“Pretty much,” Quistis replied tartly.

“Are there any limitations I should be aware of on when or where this should happen? Or do you not care? Hell, if we’re being business-like and efficient about it, I could just stop by after class one day, bend you over your desk, and be done with it. How’s that sound?”

He obviously expected her to object. In another mood, Quistis would have. But in the interest of pushing his buttons, she settled both hands on his chest and told him in a throaty purr, “ _Hot._ That’s how it sounds. And I can’t deny that I’ve thought about it.”

Something in his demeanor sharpened, turning predatory.

_Yes._

She trailed an encouraging hand down his belly and hooked her fingers on the top of his pants. A soft noise slipped past his lips.

“Maybe you should try visiting me after my class sometime and see how it goes,” she said, tugging him a little closer.

His eyes narrowed. “You’re not serious.”

She shrugged and smiled mischievously. “Only one way to find out.”

A soft, almost miserable groan had him leaning over her, dragging his lips and nose through her hair. His hands clamped around her upper arms, holding her there. A palatable tension radiated off him — reminiscent of the anticipation before battle but sweeter and sharper. Quistis fought back the urge to catch his lips with hers and drown in him. Every breath she took, drawing in the scent of him, took her straight back to lying on her bed beside him, the world coming apart around her as he brought her to a shattering climax.

_Oh God_.

She wanted to feel that again.

Maybe playing this game wasn’t such a good idea after all.

She’d be tormenting herself just as much as him.

Seifer bent and rubbed his cheek against hers, then nuzzled his face along the line of her jaw. Unable to resist him, she tilted her head, offering the tender flesh of her throat. He clutched her to his chest and pressed an open-mouthed kiss down the side of her neck with a growl that reverberated straight into her bones. Hot, desperate kisses slid down the side of her throat and then back up. His fingers dug into the backs of her arms.

“Hyne, you taste good,” he rumbled before nipping at her with his teeth. “I bet you taste just as nice everywhere else.”

Quistis tilted her head back and melted into him. How couldn’t she, when he talked like that?

“How do you do this to me?” she wondered aloud.

She’d come here angry. Had even thought to challenge him. Now she was helpless in his arms, slave to his every touch and breath and groan.

He ran his tongue along her jaw, then caught her mouth in a breathless, hungry kiss.

Ah, God. She needed to find some control. She was perched on the precipice and could already feel herself falling. That wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

_He_ was supposed to fall this time, damn it.

Emboldened by lust — both his and hers — Quistis tightened her grip on his pants with one hand and slipped the other one down past his waistband.

He jerked and sucked in a sharp breath, then started to say something but didn’t have time to get a single word out before Quistis’s fingers brushed against the hard, smooth length of him, rendering him speechless. Her throat closed up, too. Both with shock and passion. She hadn’t expected to find him quite _that_ aroused. She didn’t even have her whole hand down his pants; he’d come up to meet her.

A litany of curses spilled from his mouth.

Quistis took that as a good sign.

She lifted onto her toes and burrowed her hand deeper.

He responded with a brutal kiss and a helpless thrust of his hips, pushing his length against her palm.

The lust that wracked Quistis was near violent in its intensity. She wrapped her hand around him and delighted in his groan of surrender. Her whole life, Seifer had been a source of near constant antagonism and chaos. To have him so firmly under her control, quivering in her hands, was its own unique pleasure. One she didn’t anticipate enjoying quite as much as she did.

_This wouldn’t be as good with anyone else…_ she thought dimly to herself.

“Quistis…” Seifer tangled a hand in her hair and buried his face in it. An experimental stroke of her hand made his breaths go ragged and every muscle in his body tense.

Was this how he’d felt last night when he touched her?

God, it was powerful what she could do to him.

Marveling at herself, Quistis set about destroying him bit by bit with small motions of her hand. He responded like a wild animal. Growling. Pawing at her. Feral and senseless.

She loved it.

His hands were all over her — one gripping her bottom, the other trekking toward her breast — when a noise from the hallway brought her out of her haze. When she paused, Seifer whimpered.

“ _Quis_ —” be began to object.

She pulled her hand out of his pants. “Someone’s coming.”

“Someone’s what?” He blinked at her dumbly when she stepped back, out of his grip. He looked a mess, all flushed and out of breath, his erection obvious in his pants, his eyes dilated and glazed. There was no way anyone who walked in wouldn’t know precisely what they’d been up to.

A momentary panic seized her.

And then, just as quickly, it left.

What did it matter if Raijin and Fujin knew?

They were Seifer’s posse. Loyal to him above all else. They would keep his secrets. And they wouldn’t judge her either.

It might be nice to be able to come over to his room whenever she wanted. To not have to be so secretive.

She relaxed, meeting his eyes, as the voices she’d heard got closer.

“I just want him to leave me alone for a while, ya know?” someone proclaimed, just on the other side of the door.

Seifer tilted his head, listening.

“That’s not Raijin,” he said.

“It’s not?”

He shook his head and the footsteps moved straight past his door, not even pausing.

The odd heaviness the man’s wake left in Quistis’s chest felt strangely like disappointment. But maybe that was because she and Seifer had been interrupted yet again right when things were getting interesting. It couldn’t possibly be that she’d been relieved at the prospect of discovery. Could it?

Quistis straightened her clothes, wondered vaguely when her skirt had gotten hiked up on her thighs like that, and took a moment to collect herself.

“Sorry. I guess I panicked.”

“Worried about being seen with me?” Seifer asked, forking a hand through his hair.

“Worried about being seen in the middle of something I’d rather have be private,” she replied with a sigh. “I’m not embarrassed about being with you. I just…”

How could she explain this?

“The Trepies made my love life a matter of public interest before I even had one. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without them noticing. Especially after the war, they got really intense. The amount of speculation I’ve had to overhear and to read about what I might be like in bed…” She crossed her arms protectively over herself. “I don’t want to be a public sex object anymore.”

Seifer’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t know they’d gotten so out of line. Makes me want to kick their sorry asses the way I used to.”

Quistis smiled at him. “My knight in shining armor?”

“Dunno if I’d call it _shining_. But I’d do my damndest to put the fear of God in every last one of ‘em.”

A surge of affection fired through her and she nearly walked over and put her arms around him — not to pursue further what they’d been doing before, but just to touch and hold him and have him near.

“Are you sure you still have a sharp enough edge to scare Trepies?” she asked teasingly.

He arched an eyebrow. “You think I’ve gone soft?”

“You did let your class out early today.”

“Only because Squall came by. He had news. He’s going to try to get me a second class. I let them out early so I could come tell Raij and Fu.”

“That’s great,” she said, and really meant it. “You earned it.”

“Damn straight, I earned it! I’ve been working my ass off. ‘Bout time someone noticed.”

He’d gone so straight and proud. It was charming and surprisingly innocent of him, a hint of the little boy he could have been had he grown up with parents and a proper home life rather than in a school for mercenaries. Quistis’s heart squeezed so hard it ached in her chest.

“We should celebrate,” she said.

His expression sharpened and tossed her right back into the much more familiar and comfortable waters of lust. “What do you have in mind?”

“Want to meet after dinner? I’ve got a bottle of fancy Dolletian wine Xu gave me a while back that I haven’t popped yet. I’ll split it with you.”

“Sure. Where do you want to meet?”

She didn’t trust herself not to simply drag him straight into bed if they met in her room, and with the way she was feeling right now, affection nearly as strong as desire, that seemed a dangerous prospect.

“How about the quad?” she suggested instead. “It’s nice there after dark.”

He smiled. “I’ll be there.”

That was her signal to go before his roommates walked in on them for real.

She strode up to him, settled both hands on his chest, and popped up on her toes to brush a hasty kiss across his lips.

“See you later,” she said as she turned and left the room.

It only occurred to her after she’d walked out that their plan to meet sounded a lot like a second date, and a romantic one, at that — full of starlight and wine.

Despite herself, she was excited, her foolish heart all aflutter.

She hoped it wouldn’t break too badly when whatever was between them eventually fell apart. 

* * *

Seifer dragged in deep breaths of the sweet, ocean air as he stepped into the quad. The day’s flurry of activity around the Garden Festival had ended — the now mostly constructed stage abandoned, decorations twirling gently in the breeze. The sky above was a uniform, velvety black, punctuated by stars and a brilliant wash of silvery moonlight laid across the ground.

No one was around; Quistis hadn’t arrived yet.

He shifted the thick blanket he had under one arm into his hands and squeezed it, somehow both cold with anxiety and hot with keen anticipation.

He knew he’d messed up with her the night before. So for tonight he had tossed his seduction plan and tried to forget everything he knew about that stupid novel and about romance heroes.

Tonight he would try merely to focus on not doing anything stupid. Though that was apparently easier said than done. Especially when he never seemed to realize he was being stupid until it was way too goddamn late.

Plus, days worth poor sleep and unfulfilled desire had left him on edge.

He was liable to make all kinds of dumb decisions in this sort of mood.

By staying confined to his room, finishing up his assessments, he had managed to avoid Garden Festival duty all day. Mildly curious, he walked about, looking over what he had been accomplished in his absence.

Zell was in charge of all the construction. Seifer grudgingly had to admit that he was doing a good job. The old stage looked sturdy and new and smelled pleasantly of fresh cut wood. The decorations were beginning to accumulate, too — their undersea theme a little too on-the-nose for Seifer’s taste, but lovely nonetheless. A banner caught his eye, strung up over the stage. The paint on it still shone wetly in the moonlight.

“Balamb Garden Talent Show,” he murmured, reading it aloud. “Oh boy.”

“I know,” came Quistis’s voice behind him. “Selphie initially wanted to limit it to a battle of the bands type thing, or a singing contest, but Zell convinced her that everyone with a special talent should be able to participate.”

Seifer turned to see her walking up to him, her hair and skin glowing in the moonlight. Sweet Hyne, she looked fucking _ethereal_. His breath momentarily left him.

“I’m assuming Chicken Wuss has some particular talent he wants to showcase?” he finally managed after a few seconds of sputtering.

“I think he’s going to do some kind of martial arts routine.”

Seifer rolled his eyes. “Of course he is. Who else is signed up?”

“Irvine is going to sing. A group of girls signed up to dance. Rinoa’s going to do pet tricks with Angelo. Nida’s playing violin. There’s more, but those are the only ones I remember.”

“You’re not going to sign up?” he asked.

Quistis pulled a face. “I don’t have any talents.”

“Yes you do.”

“None that are performative in nature. I suppose I could get up there and cast some blue magic, but I don’t want to kill everyone in the audience, so…” She shrugged.

“I remember you being a pretty good dancer,” he said.

Garden taught their SeeD candidates a lot of odd skills that had nothing to do with killing. Things that would help them blend in on the wide variety of missions that came their way — like dance, etiquette, and even rudimentary hardware and software hacking. While he and Quistis were cadets together, they’d been in the same ballroom dance class, and she’d been a solid partner. Graceful on her feet and precise.

“No better than anyone else here,” she argued. “And I certainly don’t know anything that would impress anyone. What about you? Any hidden talents?”

“No,” he lied.

He must’ve done a poor job of it — that or she was getting to know him a little too well — because her eyebrows immediately shot up.

“Oh my gosh. You do! What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Seifer…” She stepped close and gripped the lapels of his coat. The scent of her reached him on the breeze and _oh my God_ , she smelled good. Not perfumy but a sweet and clean and fresh out of the shower kind of good. Her eyes, rimmed with a subtle amount of dark eyeliner, looked huge and clear in the silvery moonlight. “Tell me,” she cajoled.

He found, quite pathetically, that he could not deny her.

“I’m a passably good singer.”

She blinked in surprise. “You are?”

“Yeah. While you and I were taking ballroom, Raijin was taking voice. He never got any good, no matter how hard he tried. Too tone-deaf to hear when he was hitting the wrong notes. I helped him practice and pretty much ended taking the whole class by proxy. He always bugged me to take it for real, but I didn’t want to.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. I guess because they were always singing folk songs and shit. Maybe if the instructor had ever bothered giving them material that was less than a hundred years old, I might’ve considered it.”

Her grip on his coat tightened. “Just how good are you?”

“I’m not going to sing for you, if that’s what what you’re getting at.”

“I just think that if you’re good, you should sign up for the contest.”

His lip curled in disgust. “No way.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s stupid.”

“Maybe. But it would totally change how people see you. Right now everybody who looks at you only sees two things: former head of the Disciplinary Committee and former sorceress knight. Letting people see other facets of you, other aspects of who you are, would go a long way toward integrating you back into Garden.”

“I don’t want to integrate.”

“I think you do.”

He snorted derisively. “I couldn’t care less whether people here like me.”

“What about me?”

He slipped an arm around her waist. “For some reason, you already do.”

“Parts of you,” Quistis conceded, then dragged his head down for a kiss that set his blood on fire. “I brought the wine,” she announced when she pulled away and held up a small, dark bottle.

Seifer estimated it only held, at best, about two glasses worth. Which he sent up a silent prayer of thanks for since he absolutely loathed wine. He didn’t get why everyone else made such a fuss over it. Every wine he’d ever tasted — red, white, _whatever_ — was exactly the same: bitter, dry, and like a glass of rubbing alcohol with a vinegary splash of rotten grape juice mixed in. For Quistis’s sake, he was willing to choke some down, but he was intensely relieved not to have to subject himself to more than one glass of it.

They found a spot far away from the door that had a good view of the ocean and was deep in the shadows. Seifer put his blanket down and they sat on it together, then pulled the remainder up over their shoulders. Seifer leaned back against the wall and discovered that it vibrated slightly and was warm to the touch — a generator probably running somewhere not too far away.

Quistis settled close beside him, the blanket tucked tight around her, and uncapped the bottle.

She offered it to him first. “To your upcoming new class,” she said.

He tried to hide his scowl as he took the smallest sip possible and made a show of gulping loudly before handing it back to her.

She tilted it to her own lips and sighed with a weary sort of contentment as she leaned back against the wall, tucked up closely at his side. He liked the warmth and weight of her pressing against him enough that he slipped his arm around her shoulders.

“I’m assuming he’ll be recommending you for the gunblading class?” Quistis murmured.

“I don’t know.”

“Aside from basic combat, it makes the most sense. If someone asked me to pick out a class for you, it’d be that. Though your form as has always been…unique.” She angled a teasing smile up at him. “Squall is a much more by-the-book teacher.”

Seifer snorted. “I tried following the book. Didn’t work.”

“Which book was that?” she asked and offered him the wine again.

He waved it away — both the question and the wine. “Doesn’t matter.”

Quistis took another long sip of wine and contemplated the sky. Out at sea, there were no city lights for the stars to contend with and they blazed bright, so many that Seifer was sure there had to be some he’d never seen before. The milky band of the galaxy spilled across the heavens to their right, angling into the water.

Neither one of them said anything for a while.

Seifer squeezed Quistis tighter. The outside air had a bite to it, but huddled together with a blanket, Seifer was as cozy and relaxed as he’d been in years.

“You sure you don’t want any more wine?” Quistis said and offered it to him again. “You’re letting me drink it all, and it always makes me so sleepy. I was already so tired to begin with, I think if I have more…” She yawned.

Seifer took the bottle but cringed as he took a swig.

“You don’t have to drink any if you don’t like it,” she said, watching him.

“What makes you think I don’t like it?”

“Because you swallowed that line you were taking cough syrup.”

“Well…” He scowled at the damn bottle. “It does sort of taste the same as cough syrup, now that you mention it.”

Quistis chuckled, grabbed the bottle from his hands, and tossed it over the side of Garden. It made a distant clank as it hit the side somewhere before splashing into the ocean far below.

“I’m not much of a fan either,” she admitted. “That’s why I still had the bottle sitting around. I don’t like it enough to drink it on my own. But it was a gift, so I didn’t want to just throw it away.”

“How long have you been holding onto it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of years?” Her hand slipped over onto his thigh. “I suppose there’s more than one way to celebrate though.”

Her touch filled him with conflicting emotions. He craved it at the same time as it terrified him. He was so wrung out, he didn’t think he had the wherewithal to resist her tonight. And he certainly didn’t have the energy to make a good showing if he gave in. He was caught between wanting badly to stop fighting, to allow himself the pleasure she offered, and the certain knowledge that he was far too exhausted to do much more than drown in her.

Biting his lip, he took her hand and twined his fingers through hers, not moving it but holding it steady.

“I wish you’d stop holding back,” she told him, sounding irritated. “It’s not like you.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

She shook her head. “You don’t disappoint. Just frustrate.”

Pivoting, she shifted onto her knees and climbed into his lap, straddling him — chest to chest. She sat back far enough to get a good look at his face, her brow crinkled with the sharpness of her scrutiny. Seifer didn’t want to think about what she saw when she looked at him. A failure? A fallen knight? A man impossible to love?

She tilted her head and reached out with one hand to brush her fingers along the line of his jaw. Her delicate touch trailed all the way back to his ear, then up, into his hair where she played briefly with the little stubborn bit that always escaped to flip forward no matter how securely he slicked it back. For some reason, it made her smile — just a little tug at the corners of her mouth — and then her finger trailed down the line of his scar.

Whatever she was thinking, she kept it to herself. She leaned in and kissed him. But it was not the passionate, persuasive kiss he’d anticipated. It was lazy. Languid. The slight aftertaste of wine lingering on her lips was infinitely more pleasant than the drink itself.

Seifer gathered her in his arms and held her.

_This_ he could do.

So long as he didn’t think too much about how closely her hips were pressed to his, anyway.

When she finally broke away, she leaned her head on his shoulder and slumped against him with a sigh. “Stupid wine. Makes me so tired.” She yawned and nuzzled her face against the side of his neck. “Course, the fact that I barely slept at all last night doesn’t help either.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“I thought I might try to seduce you tonight, you know,” she muttered and yawned again. “Get you back a little for what you did to me last night. But it’s so nice just sitting here…”

He tried not to imagine what sort of seduction plans she might have had in mind.

She snuggled closer. “Truce then. Just for tonight. But tomorrow I’m coming for you.”

She made it sound like war. And Seifer was very aware that the last time they’d gone to war, she’d come out the victor. He had no doubt history would repeat itself. She wanted him, and soon she would have him. He wasn’t sure if there was even any point to putting it off anymore. This thing with her was turning him inside out, and perhaps it would be easier for all involved to give in and let her fascination with him wind down to its inevitable conclusion.

Tonight though…tonight she offered peace.

And, like greedy solace-starved orphan that he was deep down inside, he would take it.

He held her tight. Just the two of them, the ocean, and the stars.


End file.
